Merciless
by Phoenix-Roar
Summary: TYKA! "Just like old times, isn't it, Kai?" Hiding problems in the back of the mind doesn't solve them - they must be faced. Kai gets that opportunity, but will he be forced to drag Tyson down with him?
1. Discovery, Recovery

**EDIT! - IF OC'S SCARE YOU, DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU FROM READING THIS FIC. THERE IS ONLY A - VERY - TEMPORARY ROLE FOR AN OC, FOR THE SAKE OF THE PLOT. PLEASE, GIVE IT A CHANCE!**

**Note: **_**DO NOT**_ expect me to update frequently as I have a busy life – actually, scratch that – **no** life due to homework. :) This was also a spur-of-the-moment idea, so I haven't planned ahead at all, which will probably make updating even slower.

_**FOREWARNING: **_This story is intended to be **TYKA. **That is, a _**romantic relationship**_ between **Tyson **and **Kai.** If you do not like these types of relationships, **press the back button immediately. **

**Therefore, it should be noted that the ****reader should not send me flames**** because of the pairing. **

_**SWEAR WORDS**__** ARE USED IN THIS FANFIC.**_** Don't like it, don't read it. Simple.**

_**Disclaimer: I, under the pen name Phoenix-Roar, do not own Beyblade – That is, I do not own any characters, the plot of the show/manga, names, **__**etc. (It should be noted that I **_**do**_** own Viktor Svyatoslav, a character that will be introduced later.) Takao Aoki owns Beyblade (I think? That's the name that's on the spine of the manga, anyway… If somebody could clear this up for me, I'd be grateful). I am not making any profits whatsoever from writing this. I am just writing it for the entertainment of others and to improve my literary skills. I thank fanfiction . net for providing me with a server to share my fanfictions with others that are willing to read them. **_

Please, please, _**please**_** review! **Reviews are one of the factors that keep me writing.

For Reference:

'…' – Human thinking.

"…" – Human speaking out loud.

_Italics, _usually following_ '…' _– Bitbeast's thoughts.

THE PLOT IS SET TO _POST_ G. REV.

* * *

_How to survive __without a Heart_

_Chapter I_

_Discovery; __Recovery_

A soft blanket of cotton covered the azure sky, miniscule pieces of it falling unto the lands below its omnipresence. A lack of brutal wind allowed said fluffy pieces to be pulled down to earth at a comfortable, silent pace. With a mute sigh, the snowflakes would come to rest once a physical object stifled their paths.

One such physical being was becoming an object of attention for the flakes of the clouds. Its double coloured hair, silver and cobalt blue, was seasoned with the precipitation like corn would be with salt. A cloud of steam flowed from its mouth as it exhaled deeply, disappearing almost as quickly as it formed. It – more specifically, he – walked in a quiet fashion through the building up layers of snow. The taciturn young adult of sixteen years slid his slender yet hard-worked hands into his jacket pockets to shield them from the biting cold. Orbs as crimson as rubies analyzed the landscape. Trees exposed without their canopy of leaves surrounded him, the branches stretching towards the zenith, as if to entwine with the thick, overcast atmosphere.

The trees' trunks were becoming thinner and thinner. After a few minutes of trudging through the woods, Kai could see a brighter light ahead of him, signalling that he was coming to the edge of said terrain.

Nonchalant and taciturn would be the first thing to come to mind when thinking of Kai Hiwatari. When the Bladebreakers - Rei, Max, Kenny, and Tyson - first met him, his aura exerted coldness far greater than that which was trying to chill Kai as he walked through the woods. Indeed, he used to be even colder than absolute zero. However, over the years of being near the Bladebreakers, the iceberg blockade between himself and the universe began to thaw. He hated to admit it, but he'd grown a small liking to his team, even if he didn't act that way.

Again, Kai reassured himself, he still didn't like them all _that_ much. They probably didn't enjoy his presence because he made them train like there would be no tomorrow. The cold hearted one smirked for a quick moment, a snide expression crossing his unbelievably handsome features. That reminded him – he'd promised the team an extra practice session that day.

As the last few trees dwindled around him, Kai subtly stroked the cobalt beyblade in his left pocket. He gently extracted it from its shelter and held it in his hand, examining the beyblade as the shadows outlining it retreated at the strengthening invasion of daylight. He focused on the chip in the middle. A graceful firebird looked back at him. His lips managed to coordinate into a small smile, not very indifferent from his usual unemotional façade. Even though the change was miniscule, he knew that the phoenix would understand.

The trees were well behind him now. A beautiful meadow was splayed out before him, a white canvas. The chilling wind, now slightly stronger than before due to the non-existence of the trees, caused Kai to readjust the collar of his scarf to warm the bottom half of his face. Warmth trickled into the palm of his sinistral hand, trailing up his arm. He looked back down at his phoenix again, gratitude showing within his scarlet eyes.

A faint chromatic light began to emit from the chip. Kai's eyebrows pulled together slightly in adroit concentration, his other features remaining frozen. His bitbeast was trying to tell him something.

Kai had been following a set of footprints which were hard to see due to the snow that had settled overtop them. He continued to walk at a brisk pace along the faint trail. The chip containing the firebird accelerated in glowing the farther the teenager went, shining like a beacon with a crimson hue similar to Kai's eyes – the flames of the phoenix. The warmth emitted gave Kai a new boost of energy, and he began to walk faster.

After a moment, the glowing and warmth began to fade. The handsome beyblader placed his beyblade back inside his jacket pocket. Kai concentrated ahead, seeing two figures not too distant from his own position. One was extremely grand compared to the other in size. As Kai approached, the figures began to clarify themselves. One was a teenager about the same age as Kai, and the other was not human.

A large dragon hovered in the air, somewhat touching the snowy ground. The mystical creature was covered with defensive plates that were different tints of blue. It was serpentine in shape, limbs portraying copious sharp claws, each the blade of a scythe which were capable of shredding endless amounts of steel. The dragon's being glowed with an unearthly, eldritch radiance, quite similar to a phantom. It loosely coiled its long spiritual body around the human as if to shield it from the weather, subconsciously flicking its tail in the air.

The teenager had a ponytail of cobalt blue hair. It reached the length of his shoulder blades. He had slightly tanned skin. His eyes, focused on the dragon, were a very similar colour to his hair. A cap was placed on his head; his usual fashion.

"Dragoon, I'm sorry I couldn't talk to you in person for a while. I was busy. I never got a chance to be by myself," the teenager said, Kai just entering within earshot to hear the part of the conversation. The blue haired teen smiled kindly at his spirit.

There was silence for a moment.

"What was it that you needed to talk to me so badly about?"

More silence, this time for a longer duration.

"What…? What do you mean by that?"

"Tyson."

"Wah!"

The teenager referred to as Tyson whipped around, eyes wide with surprise. Dragoon shifted, uncoiling from his companion. He swam through the air slowly, stopping to hover close to Tyson, keeping his catlike eyes trained on the approaching figure.

"Kai!" Tyson nervously laughed. "W-what are you doing here?"

"Following you," Kai grumbled in discontent, fixing his scarf. "You can't disappear to the middle of god knows where," Kai expanded his arms as if to gesture to the surrounding area, "when we've got a practice session to do." Crimson eyes watched Dragoon.

"Oh… Yeah, I guess you're right… It's just… I haven't had the time to talk to Dragoon, y'know, one-on-one," Tyson explained, looking back into the face of the large serpentine dragon.

Tyson frowned.

"Dragoon? What's wrong?"

An inhuman snarl escaped from the mythical beast, teeth as narrow and sharp as needles barred.

Kai froze, glaring at the dragon. He placed a foot backwards, ready to run if it was going to attack.

"Dragoon, stop it! Kai's not our enemy, you should know that!" Tyson shouted. A deep growl rumbled in Dragoon's chest. Teeth still showing in great dislike, the dragon suddenly twisted and returned to the chip in the middle of Tyson's beyblade. The glowing aura remained for a moment, like an imprint in the air, before disappearing after its owner.

Tyson sighed after an uncomfortable moment of noiselessness. "Heh," Tyson smiled at Kai, as if it would make the situation any better, "I guess Dragoon doesn't like you too much, huh?"

"No shit." Kai muttered under his breath with a scowl plastered on his face.

The two stood immobile in awkwardness, the snowfall still not letting up.

"Is that normal?" Kai said monotonously, seemingly talking to the air as his eyes were focussed on the clouds.

"Is what normal?"

"Talking with your bitbeast like that."

"Why, you've never done it?"

The Russian didn't reply. He pulled the phoenix beyblade from his pocket and stared at the chip with an unreadable expression on his face.

"No." His voice seemed to portray a hint of jealousy; or was that sadness that Tyson detected?

Said blue haired boy reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a chocolate bar. In the midst of unwrapping it, he caught Kai's unimpressed glare, and smiled sheepishly. "What? I'm starvin'!" He took a bite, and then began to talk again. "Voo shoo' rewy drr' to talk wiph'er!" Bits of semi-chewed pieces of the junk food flew from his mouth. Kai crinkled his nose slightly, a look of disgust crossing his handsome features.

Swallowing the food, Tyson let out a small laugh at Kai's expression. "Sorry. What I said was; you should really try to talk with her! You already talk to her through, like… _telepathy_, right?"

Kai once again averted his eyes from the pig standing before him and looked back at Dranzer, the phoenix, her frozen image staring back up at him.

"Riiiight?" Tyson pushed.

"…Rarely."

Tyson's smile disappeared slowly as a look of confusion replaced it. "Max and Rei, they both told me that they're pretty close to their bitbeasts. They hold conversations with them all the time. I mean, they even summon Draciel and Drigger to physical form, like I just did, to talk to them in person. You've been around us for long enough for me to know that you aren't the nicest guy, but Dranzer should definitely talk to you… more than rarely, at least. If I were her, that's what I'd do."

Kai raised an eyebrow and looked at him after the last comment.

Tyson slightly crimsoned. "What I mean is, y'know, when _we're blessed _with the few words you speak," Tyson spoke with a sarcastic voice for part of the sentence, "you say some pretty deep stuff, full of meaning. If you talked more, maybe Dranzer would want to talk back. Just a suggestion."

"…Hn," Kai grunted.

"Oi, does reverse psychology work on you or something? When I say you need to talk more, you get quiet! Did you wear your vocal chords out? Actually, this is the longest conversation I've had with you in a long time, come to think of it…"

No reply.

"Hey, do you want to try calling out Dranzer? I'll help you." Tyson ate the last piece of chocolate bar and stuffed the wrapper in his pocket.

The chilled metal of Dranzer bit into Kai's palm, nearly drawing blood. He hadn't realized that he was holding it so tightly.

"…Fine."

"Okay. First, you know how you can sense your bitbeast always present in your mind, like a second conscience, but it's a part of you?"

Kai nodded subtly.

"Now, close your eyes, and try to reach out to Dranzer. Try to combine your two minds together."

The Russian closed his eyes as he was told, and soon after, all background noise fell away. There was no snow falling around him, no ground below him, no zenith above him, no Tyson before him.

'_Dranzer?'_ Kai searched through his conscious, sensing, feeling the phoenix there. But he couldn't see her. He reached out, searching the infinite plain of his mind, but he couldn't find her.

_Kai._

A velvety smooth voice echoed though his mind as if it were whispered from atop a mountain. It was inhuman in its beauty.

A warm feeling started to spread through him, making him feel like he had disappeared from the snowstorm. He'd found Dranzer.

His eyelids fluttered open, revealing crimson orbs. "I found her." He looked at Tyson with half-seeing vision; he was somewhat focused on his instructor, and somewhat focussed on the warm spirit in his mind.

Tyson looked a bit concerned. "That took way longer than it should have. Second step: Try to bring her out of your mind and into reality. It's hard to explain; it's something that you need to figure out on your own."

Kai closed his eyes again. Tyson analyzed his emotionless face. He looked serene when he was delving into his subconscious. After a moment, Kai's eyebrows began to arch downwards slightly, his frown becoming more defined.

"It didn't work. She's far away again." Kai opened his eyes for the second time, glaring at the ground. They seemed more vapid than a minute ago, somehow.

"It's okay, Kai. You can always try again later. Do you want to head back now?" Tyson looked up at the darkening sky. There was no break in the clouds, and the snow was still falling. "Please tell me you brought a car or something to pick us up! I'm not in the mood to walk all the way back to the dojo," Tyson grumbled.

"You're a dumbass for _walking_ out here in the first place," Kai crossed his arms and glared at his team member. "I paid a taxi to wait outside the woods. It's an extra thousand yen for every extra half-hour we leave him waiting. And that, of course, is coming out of _your _salary."

"Aww, no, that's not fair!"

"Me having to come out here to drag your sorry ass back home isn't fair, idiot."

"Humph!"

* * *

Kai assumed that Tyson was watching the streetlights flash by as he was leaning towards the cab window, but was assured that he was wrong when he heard a soft snore. 

The teen with two blue triangles on each cheek had both hands hidden in his pockets. He had never stopped clutching his beyblade since the event at the meadow. He couldn't deny the truth from himself; he was jealous of Tyson. Not only Tyson, but of all of his team members.

He closed his eyes in contemplation, a habit he had always had. Maybe Dranzer had never forgiven him for the Black Dranzer incident. That was probably a major part of the problem. Although it was a few years ago, Kai could feel the deep wounds that it had inflicted on his mind. There was no doubt that Dranzer was still upset. If Kai could sense the wounds, then Dranzer would probably be still living through the worst of them. He'd tried to fix the relationship between the firebird and himself, and it had worked. But the future potential between the two was greatly unquestionable.

"Oi, you two. This is it, isn't it?"

Kai's eyes snapped open, and he regarded the property the driver had pulled up beside. Tyson made a couple of grunting noises and stretched dramatically. "That was an awesome nap! Oh, we're home already? Thanks mister!"

The newly awoken blader threw as much of a feral glare as he could muster at Kai while searching around in his pocket for some money to pay the driver.

"…Comes out of _my_ salary, of course…" Tyson grumbled, handing over the cash.

* * *

Max opened the door to greet a shivering Tyson and an indifferent Kai. "Hey guys! Where were you?" He moved aside to allow them to enter Tyson's dojo. His electric blue eyes sparkled with their normal hyper energy level, his sunshine blonde hair in the usual disarray. 

Tyson shook himself like a dog, solid and melted snowflake matter alike spraying the surrounding areas. Kai glared at him as if to say 'uncouth', a line stolen from Robert, and gracefully brushed snow off of his shoulders and hair.

"Oh, I was just out for a walk when I ran into Kai, that's all." Tyson replied to the earlier question, grinning at his best friend.

"Kai, is this the first extra practice that you've booked and then missed?!" Max fake-gasped, and then quickly ran down the hall 'teehee-ing' when Kai shot him a death glare.

"Everybody gets quadruple training tomorrow to make up for the double training lost today," concluded Kai, who had crossed his arms by now, another natural habit of his. Tyson and Rei, who was sipping a cup of green tea nearby, groaned at their captain. "And Max, you get quintuple training tomorrow for being an idiot." Surprisingly, Max heard this from across the residence and howled in agony.

As soon as he had finished howling, Max quietly asked Kenny, who happened to be working on his laptop in the same general area, "How much is a quintuple?"

Without looking up from his screen, Kenny held up all five fingers. Max pretended to faint.

* * *

The dojo ceiling never could contend Kai for hours on end, especially in the dark. The Russian beyblader stared at said ceiling, thoughts rushing through his head. Tyson's snoring was the only thing breaking the dead silence. Kai stretched upwards, reaching for his digital wrist watch. He spared it a glance. Three thirty, not bad. Placing it back in its original spot above his head, Kai went back to staring at the ceiling again. 

Rei, Max, and Kenny had all departed within two hours of Kai and Tyson's return home. They'd then had dinner, bento boxes; Tyson, of course, had managed to eat his within two minutes, while Kai hardly touched his. He hadn't felt hungry.

Why was it that everybody could summon their bitbeasts except him? What did they do to allow such a bond to occur? What had _they_ suffered through? They'd all had good lives; that's to say, better than Kai's. Nothing could compare to his past. Didn't he _deserve _to have a best friend to rely on, to help him with his problems, which just so happened to be plentiful? Hadn't he suffered_ enough? _Kai let out a frustrated sigh, now glaring at the wooden panels above him.

'_What am I doing wrong, Dranzer?'_

His question cascaded back at him several times, lost to the mountain range of his mind. Kai rolled onto his side, seeing the dark outline of Tyson's figure not too far away. The counterpart of Dragoon was breathing slowly, an aria of snores without the accompanying music.

'_At least somebody is able to sleep n__ormally.'_

A half-hour passed, and Kai could feel the fatigue flowing through his veins. A somewhat lighter shade of light started to filter in through the high, barred windows.

'_Whatever I've done, Dranzer… I'm sorry._'

Finally, Kai slipped into unconsciousness, eyelids fluttering over his crimson irises. At last, peace had decided to come to him; although his penitence would never leave him alone.

* * *

A river of sunlight flooded through the high windows, warming the wooden room as if to tell it that morning had arrived. A moment passed and Tyson screwed up his face, disgruntled. He rolled onto his back, letting out a large puff of air from his lungs. Wearily, the Japanese blader opened one eye halfway, not fully conscious of reality. 

Despite the dense rays that graciously came to greet him, Tyson subconsciously sensed an uncomfortable stillness in the room. He tilted his head to the left. After a quick analysis of the perfectly made futon a meter or so away, he concluded that Kai had already gotten up.

Said Russian had been his 'roomie' for a couple of months or so, and thus, Tyson had gotten used to the other's usually constant presence. For instance, every time he was in a room alone with his captain, it was like some godly, eldritch figure had pressed the mute button on their programme. But there was still _something _that filled the emptiness… something greater than silence, but less than the quietest noise. Without Kai, there seemed to be a different kind of silence altogether that highly disturbed him.

Tyson suddenly did not want to be in that room all alone. The sun's rays no longer warmed him. He opened his eyes fully after passing his wrists back and forth over them. He flipped his sheets to the side and stood up, stretching while taking his first few steps of the day.

Perfect silence rang through Kai's ears, imaginary mountains rolling out before him onto an infinite horizon. A voice surrounded him, cooing to him softly, its comforting warmth drowning out all of Kai's other thoughts. He yearned to get closer to it, like a moth to a flame, like a child to a mother, like a plant to the sun. He could feel the warmth increasing, like the spreading fatality of a violent fever; was it, in fact, the middle of winter? Memory was a thing of the past, for however long the past may have been from that moment.

The Russian sensed a different kind of warmth resting on his shoulder, which had just freed itself of the numbness of meditation. Still mostly wrapped up in his inner consciousness, he had difficulty realizing that he was intended to awaken by some other physical force. He could not register what it was that attempted to compete with the warmth of the phoenix. Slowly, reluctantly drifting away from the rocky sanctuary, Kai opened his eyes. Half-lidded wine coloured eyes stared blankly at the floor for a moment, before rising to scan the face before him.

Tyson stood in front of him, his uncapped mass of blue hair tied back in a quickly done, sloppy ponytail. He was slightly leaning over Kai, supported by an arm. Kai flicked his eyes, following the path of his team-mate's arm. Tyson's hand was placed on his shoulder. The Japanese blader's palm was the unidentifiable source of foreign warmth that had interrupted his entire state of meditation.

Kai turned to look Tyson in the eyes. The vicious storms that appeared specifically during the summer season had been locked within those orbs. The dark clouds of a typhoon made the outside ring, the circle that defined the iris from the rest of the eye. Intense thunderbolts of silvery gold shot out from behind his pupils, seeming like two eclipses of binary stars, frozen in the exact same position in the exact same point in time.

Within a moment of realizing that his captain was not, in fact, dead, Tyson began the removal of his hand. Kai had looked completely lost when his eyelids first fluttered open. After a pause to allow himself to adjust, he'd looked into Tyson's eyes. Tyson couldn't help but stare back; he'd been caught in a snare that Kai had not even made on purpose.

Kai's eyes were so unique, unlike anything he'd seen before. Cherries, a setting sun, crimson wine, a pure drop of blood; all beautiful things individually, but after being compared with his eyes, they were put to shame. The silvery strands of hair that interrupted the normally empty crimson plates had only added to his mystery.

Below the twin red wonders, Tyson noted more prominent black circles. Kai always seemed a bit fatigued, but he seemed a bit more tired than usual.

"You're alive after all! For a second, I thought you'd gone and died just sitting upright like that."

Again, no reply. The pressure under Kai's puncturing gaze was immense, making Tyson nervous.

"So," Tyson said after straightening up, shifting his weight to the other foot, trying to break the ice of silence; even if this was the silence he preferred, the unique silence that he shared with Kai. He trotted out of the living room in which Kai was sitting and into the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge.

"What are you doing up so early?" Tyson spoke, throwing a quick glance at the clock on the wall, which read six thirty in the morning. "Never mind - stupid question, you're always up early," continued Tyson, pulling out a carton of milk and closing the door. "Let me rephrase that. What have you been doing? Trying to connect with Dranzer again?"

Kai nodded his head absentmindedly, forgetting that Tyson could no longer see him. The subconscious fog still gripped the pale captain, unwilling to let him snap out of it.

"I'll take the silence as a yes." Tyson began to pour some cereal into a bowl. "How are things going with that?"

It then dawned upon Kai that actions were not enough to stabilize the one-sided conversation.

"Progress," he muttered, letting his eyelids slide shut over his tired eyes. He could still sense the warmth of Dranzer within him; it had not left, like last time he had attempted to bond with her. It was like a second circulation of blood; a backup life, in the event that the main character died. He could almost drift off to sleep right then and there, so comfortable was he.

"Do you think you're ready to give the summoning another try?" Tyson's voice was much louder now, allowing Kai to snap back to reality. He had come to sit across from Kai, supporting his bowl of cereal with his right hand and eating the food with a spoon in his left.

Kai paused. "Do you think… one day of bonding is enough?"

"Maybe, if you've been trying really hard. You need to decide these things on your own." Tyson replied with words that were muffled behind the cereal which was still going through the chewing process.

"I made a bowl for you." Tyson nodded his head in the general direction before going off on a tangent. "Jeez; you think you could take better care of yourself? I know you too well to know that you didn't get anything to eat first before meditating your ass off."

Kai had to smirk as he stretched to retrieve his bowl, which was not far away; they were sitting beside the low-rise table. Tyson _did _know him a bit too well.

They sat in silence, eating their breakfast. Obviously, Tyson finished first, setting his bowl aside. He watched Kai intently with curiosity glinting in his fascinating, stormy eyes.

Kai raised an eyebrow, slowly scraping up the last of the cereal and eating it. "Did I grow two heads?"

Tyson laughed. "No, you have this expression on your face… y'know, like you're going to say something. Quite rare, if you ask me." His eyes widened, a smile still imprinting his face. "Shall I get my camera?"

Kai placed the empty bowl beside Tyson's. "Actually, there was something…" Tyson stared at him again, curiosity brought back full force.

"Oh, really? What is it?"

Kai searched around him, finally finding what he was looking for. He picked up a folded newspaper section which he had been looking at earlier. Opening it, he scanned the page, and then ripped off a section of it. Discarding the rest, he handed the piece to Tyson. Kai seemed sad, but Tyson passed it as his normal face.

The paper displayed a cut-off article, along with numerous ads along the side. One such ad was circled with a permanent red marker. In microscopic print, it read:

_Apartment Available for Rent_

_One bedroom, fully equipped kitchenette included_

_Rent per __month approx. ¥ 150 000 (Price subject  
to change). Call superintendent, Ito Yamamoto, _

_if interested__ for residence at 759-261-3008-5217._

…

There was more information at the end, including location, but Tyson hardly read past the words '_for residence'_.

"Wha..? What is this..?" Tyson looked up at Kai, no longer smiling.

"It's time I got out of your hair. I've overstayed my welcome." Kai suddenly found the hardwood floor quite interesting. He couldn't meet Tyson's eyes.

"But isn't it a bit… _expensive?_" Tyson pressured. Kai knew that he was trying to talk him out of it.

The pale Russian crossed his arms, lifting his eyes from the floor. "I think I can cover it."

Tyson quickly scanned over the location. "It's pretty far from here; how are you going to coach our team?"

"Don't question my punctuality."

A tense moment passed.

Kai sighed. "Tyson, look… I called the superintendent last week, and I've already given him the first rent payment. It's the best thing for everybody. I just wanted to say goodbye." The last sentence took him a moment to formulate, as if the words were foreign in his mouth.

A smile crept onto Tyson's face, but this time, it was a sad one. "You are so wrong, Kai, _so_ wrong…" Tilting his head downward, his blue bangs fell across eyes and face, shadowing much of his expression. "If that's what you think you need to do… then… I can't keep you prisoner here." He placed the paper on the table and grabbed the empty bowls. Without another word, he whisked himself away to the kitchen.

Kai stood and went into the sleeping quarters, rolling up the futon that he'd borrowed from Tyson. He gently put it back inside the sliding closet, surprised that he could even remember where it came from, as it had been so long ago when he'd first taken it out. He heard a loud crash come from the kitchen; he had a correct hunch that Tyson had just carelessly thrown the ceramic bowls in the sink.

* * *

The dark room was not much of an improvement from the dark corridor from which it spawned. Kai leaned against the door, listening as the hinges moaned and creaked, until finally there was a resonating click from the lock. And then silence. 

It was an awful silence that nearly dragged Kai's soul out of him, as if his spirit had become heavily chained to the floor. It wasn't a silence he was used to, even for someone of so few words, and it depressed him. He was baffled by it, choked by it, strangled by it. The room was full of pitch black shadows; he was blinded by them. A patch of moonlight sifted through the rectangular window that led to his balcony and onto the carpet, contrasting against the pure darkness.

Kai ran his fingers along the wall beside the door after he had removed his shoes. Finally, he found a light switch, and flicked it on. A weak light illuminated the room somewhat, not quite winning the war against the shadows.

The apartment was very simple and plain. The entrance opened into a small living room, equipped with a single overhead light and independent lamp. A beige sofa was pushed into the corner, the lamp beside it. The carpet and walls were also coloured with the same palette; grey and beige. A white wooden screen door that didn't seem too secure of itself led out onto a small, concrete balcony.

The kitchenette was built into the already small living room. It was composed of a small fridge, a stove that suspiciously looked like it didn't work very well, and a pair of old cupboards. The wooden counter that divided the kitchenette from the living room was supposed to be used as the table, Kai assumed, hence the rickety old stool that was pushed up beside it.

The bathroom was just that, and nothing more. A toilet, a shower, a sink, a broken mirror. The bedroom, however, did not live up to its name; it was smaller than the bathroom. It was completely empty and shrouded in darkness. Then again, the ad didn't particularly say that it would come with a bed.

Kai sighed, about to turn back to the living room, when a soft meow broke the silence. Frozen in his tracks, Kai looked down to feel a furry body brush up against his leg. An animal had walked out of the darkness that was his 'bedroom'. He assumed it to be a feline, not an extremely young kitten, but not developed into an adult cat. It meowed again, circling him. He knelt down, and once he was sure it would not bite him, he lightly, carefully brushed his palm down its back. The kitten seemed to enjoy the treatment, and sat, staring up at him with huge, black eyes.

"Kitty, you're lucky that the Ice Prince has a soft side for your kind," Kai muttered, stroking the trusting animal a couple of times more. Its fur was extremely soft.

Kai stood, and attempted to find the light switch to his bedroom. He found it, and light poured down from a ceiling bulb. The room was the same colour as the living room. It appeared to have been empty for a long time.

"So, you've been living here by yourself, huh?" Kai looked down at the cat. It had followed him with its gaze. Its fur was white as snow, but it had one blue eye and one yellow eye. It blinked up at him cutely and let out a meow.

Kai shut off the lights and proceeded back into the living room. "I wonder if your previous owner just decided to leave you here." He took a seat on the sofa. The cat had followed him, and was sitting near his feet, continually regarding him like he was the most interesting thing it had ever seen. He analyzed the cat once more; it was skinny.

"I guess I'll never know about your past, just like you'll never know about mine," Kai concluded, "but just so you know, I'm not going to kick you out. I guess I need the company." The cat meowed in response, although it didn't understand a word that Kai said. Kai brought his feet up and stretched, trying to get used to the fact that he would have to face the newfound uncomfortable silence without Tyson's snores to satisfy it.

The kitten meandered around the living room, inspecting it all in a new light, before going back to the room where Kai had first encountered it.

"I'm supposing you want a name, then?" Kai asked after the cat had long since disappeared. Names flashed through his mind, but none, he deemed, were appropriate for this animal. He placed his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. Ten minutes passed; nothing good. Twenty minutes; still, nothing.

He nearly choked when the name 'Tyson' crossed his mind. "No way am I calling you that." He hated to admit that he was tempted to. "If he ever found out, he would laugh his ass off at me." He paused for another five minutes. He then realized that he didn't know the gender of the animal, but assumed it was female as its meow was quite high-pitched.

Finally, a name came to him. "I think I'll call you Isabella."

Hours later, Kai was in his boxers and an extra shirt, trying to sleep on the sofa. The lights had been turned off, and the apartment looked the same was as it did when Kai first walked in. Despite there being no heat provided in the apartment, heat seeped through him.

Moving images flashed through Kai's mind, recollections of the past week thrown together.

"_Tyson, look… I called the superintendent last week, and I've already given him the first rent payment. It's the best thing for everybody. I just wanted to say goodbye." _

"_I just wanted to say goodbye." _

Kai smacked his forehead and groaned, covering his eyes with his hand.

'_Why did I say something so… so…'_

_Mushy?_

'_Yes, mushy.' _

It took Kai a moment to realize that Dranzer was watching the images with him, and the extent of what he'd just thought. Her sweet voice was echoing through his head, making him feel schizophrenic.

_I think you like the boy a little more than you give yourself credit for._

'_I guess he's not the big loser I thought he was when I first met him, although he can still get on my nerves.' _

_You sound like you are trying to defend a lie. __I still say he's the closest person you have._

Kai thought hard, thinking of all the relationships he'd gained over the past few years with the Bladebreakers. _'You know… You're right. But I also have you.'_

The warmth increased, and Kai's eyelids drooped in reaction.

_You need sleep, little phoenix. __You have not been getting the amount required for human sustenance. Do not forget, training is still on for tomorrow, according to your orders._

Kai reflected on the training session they'd had after he'd told Tyson that he was moving. Tyson didn't look him directly in the eyes the entire time, didn't say anything to him. But he could feel Tyson's eyes bore into his back every time he was not facing the blue-haired blader.

Kai shut his crimson eyes, trying to follow Dranzer's demands, but the drenching silence was loud. It was as if somebody had taken cymbals to his ears and was constantly clapping them. It would not let him sleep.

* * *

Within a large, grey, morbid room sat several people in plain orange clothes on one side of a large glass divider. The walls were made of thick stone bricks, deep cracks visible within them. On the other side sat regularly dressed people, chatting to those in orange wear across the glass through telephones hooked up to individual walls. 

Four security guards entered one side, each pair pulling along a prisoner of said jail. One prisoner had short, purple hair; the man was quite tall and had a bulky face. The other prisoner had long hair dyed grey with age. The old man was forced to sit at one of the booths, while the purple-haired man was forced to stay near the wall by the remaining guards.

The ancient man tapped his fingers on his knee, glaring at the glass as if he could burn a hole through it and escape. If he stared at it long enough, the intensity of his glare probably would have done just that, but he was interrupted. The door opened on the other side, three men walking into the room.

Two of these men were dressed in black, sunglasses shielding their eyes. They maintained unemotional expressions.

The third man seemed to be the other two's central focus. He was shorter than his body guards, but definitely still tall. He hardly looked older than eighteen. The young man sported green hair, a more vivid tint of viridian. Thin bangs draped over his left eye, obscuring it well. The bangs on his right side were pinned up with a unique, thick pin that portrayed an image of a skull sitting atop crossed bones. On both sides of his face, just before his ears, draped the longest bangs he owned. A 'rat tail' of his green hair went down to his lower back, swaying with his calm gait.

The young adult sat in a chair opposite of the ancient man. They stared at each other through the glass, picking up the phones beside them.

"Hello, Voltaire." A smooth voice flowed out of the green-haired man's lips and into the phone.

"What do you want with me?" The man named Voltaire asked in a vexed voice, gripping the phone so tightly that it threatened to break. His aged eyes drilled into the young man's face, but the other was not at all affected by his hostility.

The green-haired teenager leaned in, a small smirk on his face.

"How would you like to be free again?"

Voltaire froze, unsure of what was going on. "What are your intentions of talking with me?"

"I know Biovolt has been shut down. I know that you ran it alongside that man, Boris." He flicked his eyes over to the purple-haired man in the back, before returning to their conversation. His voice lowered, although the smirk grew in intensity. "I have the power to steal Black Dranzer back from the government, who confiscated it from the labs."

Voltaire snarled, wrinkles clearly defining his anger. "How do you know all of this?" He hissed into the phone, while looking around at the guards standing around him. They did not appear to be reacting to the words the felon on the other side of the glass spoke.

"I have sources," the young one continued, "in more places than you think." He looked up at the guards on the other side of the glass. In an instant, Voltaire understood. The smooth voice carried on. "For instance, this conversation is not being monitored due to some 'background' work."

"You don't look like an evil mastermind," Voltaire grumbled, "on the contrary, more of a **punk** than anything else."

The so-called punk brushed his hand over his face, moving the obscuring bangs from his left eye. He stared into Voltaire's eyes, and saw them change emotions from hostility to amazement.

The now visible eyes shocked Voltaire. Very pale irises stared back at him, a similar colour to his hair, only much lighter. Although Voltaire had only looked into those eyes for a few seconds, he saw wickedness; a feral look that renewed hope within him.

"My name is Viktor Svyatoslav." The pale-eyed man let go of his left bangs, letting them fall loose to drape over his face. "I get what I want. I want to expand my team, and I can't let such corrupted minds as yours and Boris' go to waste. In exchange, I will break you out."

"How do you plan on doing that?"

"Nothing is impossible when you work behind the scenes; a bit of ingenious thinking here, some firepower there… It'll be fun."

"You have won my faith, Viktor."

"Expect to be working for me in a few days. Pass the information on to Boris."

Viktor hung the phone back onto its wall mount, and disappeared, followed by his body guards. He stepped into the limo waiting in the parking lot, and heard the engine roar to life. All the while, his smirk did not disappear. _'This is going to be a great deal of fun,' _Viktor thought, the powerful image of Black Dranzer imprinted in his mind.

* * *

Wow, I think this is the longest chapter I've ever written; about eighteen pages long! 

I swear this story has a plot! Hopefully we'll see more of it next chapter.

If you want to see a sketch of Viktor that I drew in Photoshop, you may follow this link to the image on DeviantART. Copy and paste it into the URL, but make sure to delete all of the spaces and replace what is needed before pressing enter.

http (colon: double backslash) phoenix-roar . deviantart . com / art / Viktor - Svyatoslav - 76142208

If the link doesn't work, then look up my homepage on DeviantART, which is under the same username as this one (Phoenix-Roar). At the top, near my stats, there should be a line that says "1 scrap (browse)". Click browse, then click on the image there. :)

Please note that it was a _very_ quick sketch, so it isn't very good. I just hope it gives you a better idea of what he looks like.

Again, **please review!** I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of _How to survive without a Heart._

Phoenix-Roar


	2. The Question: Survival

Thank you for the hits, and thanks to _wolf's lament _for reviewing! I really appreciate it.

**However, getting just **_**one**_** review is kind of depressing. **

**I know it's very annoying to read stories with OCs in them; hence, Viktor won't be around much longer.**

_**FOREWARNING:**__** Pairing is **__**TYKA**__**. This chapter has **__**lots of VIOLENCE**__** and some **__**SWEARING**__** in it, and someone **__**DIES**__**. Don't like, don't read. **_

**Disclaimer:** I, under the pen name Phoenix-Roar, do not own Beyblade – That is, I do not own any characters, the plot of the show/manga, names, etc. (It should be noted that I _do_ own Viktor Svyatoslav, a character that will be introduced later.) Takao Aoki owns Beyblade (I think? That's the name that's on the spine of the manga, anyway… If somebody could clear this up for me, I'd be grateful). I am not making any profits whatsoever from writing this. I am just writing it for the entertainment of others and to improve my literary skills. I thank for providing me with a server to share my fanfictions with others that are willing to read them.

* * *

_Viktor hung the phone back onto its wall mount, and disappeared, followed by his body guards. He stepped into the limo waiting in the parking lot, and heard the engine roar to life. All the while, his smirk did not disappear. 'This is going to be a great deal of fun,' Viktor thought, the powerful image of Black Dranzer imprinted in his mind._

_How to survive without a Heart_

_Chapter II_

_The Question: Survival_

A dismal light shone into the room from a thick, overcast sky. The colourless palette of the walls, floor, and objects inside the confining space matched the tint of the daylight. Kai slowly opened his eyes to discover that his hair was obscuring half of his vision. He sat up and unsuccessfully blew said silvery bangs out of his face. Kai inspected the room with his tired crimson eyes. It seemed that either he had grown colour-blind overnight, or the world had been drained of its chromatic diversity.

The silence of loneliness had kept Kai awake for most of the night; only letting his mind drift away for a few short periods, even though he'd kept his eyes shut in an attempt to fall asleep. Even with the warmth of the constant fever Dranzer provided, the vibe of the apartment made him feel as though he was sleeping on a bed of thorns. He felt exhausted, as if he could just drop back on the sofa and sleep the day away. But there were problems with that. Firstly, the silence; and secondly, training his team. Plus the morning commute he'd have to make by public transit.

Kai stretched and stood up, swaying subtly due to the lack of energy he possessed, and slowly went into his bathroom. He got dressed and began to apply cobalt blue paint to his face with the help of the broken mirror. He pulled out his wrist watch from his pocket, and regarded the time. His eyes widened – he was supposed to be there fifteen minutes ago – and bolted to the front door, pulling on his shoes while an angry waterfall of colourful words spilled from his mouth.

The white cat he had encountered the previous day sat atop the discoloured kitchen counter, in the process of licking her hospital-white paws. The cat stopped cleaning herself and curiously watched her new roommate, right paw frozen in midair.

"Bye, Isabella," Kai managed to say to the cat before hastily exiting his apartment and locking the door.

* * *

Kai jogged into Tyson's yard, his team-mates coming into view as he made his way to the back. Max, Rei, and Tyson were standing in a group, lightly discussing the matter of Kai's never-before-seen absence. Hilary looked cold sitting on the porch that wound around the perimeter of the massive dojo, her arms wrapped around herself; Kenny sat not too far away from the female, obsessing over his laptop.

The Russian slowed down and stopped once he reached the group of the three beybladers, a blank expression on his face. His shoulders rose and fell due to his light panting.

_I told you, did I not? You should have slept._

'_Nonchalant, cool, calm, nonchalant, cool, calm,'_ Kai chanted in his mind, not replying to Dranzer's matter-of-fact statement. He closed his eyes and crossing his arms.

"Why aren't you already training, dimwits?" Kai threw the icy sentence at them, as if to cover up the fact that he had wavered from his punctuality. He'd checked the time before he'd entered the dojo property; he managed to quicken his travel time to less than thirty minutes, even though he was still, albeit, late. Kai mentally cringed at the word.

"We were waiting for you, _our captain_, to show up!" Max said with a smile.

"Yeah, but we _did_ have a good time making fun of you while you were gone," Rei added, shaking his head free of the continually falling snowflakes. They threatened to ruin his conditioned hair, and the cat-like human would **not** have that.

"Good of you to show up, man!" Tyson chirped, coming to stand at Kai's side. He threw an arm across the stoic teen's shoulders. Kai did not visibly react to Tyson; he didn't shrug him off, as he would have usually done. Tyson retracted his arm, taking a step back.

"Hey, how come you're not wearing a coat?" Dragoon's master asked with an eyebrow raised, head slightly tilted. Tyson's smile faltered as he noticed his captain's bloodshot eyes, and the insomniac bags present underneath them.

"I don't need it anymore," Kai muttered, and Tyson understood the hidden meaning behind his words. His smile grew again, and although he wanted to say something along the lines of 'congratulations, buddy', he kept it in, as he hadn't told the rest of his friends about Kai's condition with Dranzer. Kai would have certainly murdered him slowly and painfully if he had.

Tyson was one hundred percent sure that a small smile graced Kai's lips, even if he was the only one who noticed.

"What are you waiting for? Twenty laps around the block. Whoever's last has to face me and Dranzer in a battle."

Max and Rei took off, already outside of the gate before there was even time to blink. Tyson hesitated, throwing a knowing smile back at Kai, before beginning to jog at a purposely slower speed than his other two friends.

"Tch," Kai smirked, rolling his eyes, before catching up with the blue-haired teenager.

Kai was elated to be around his team again; to be around his original roommate again, his nemesis, his friend – no, his _best_ friend… He felt truly content. His spirit had been depressed during that restless night, but it was surprising how much of a change his mood could go through in one day. His blood was now ebullient in his veins, zapped to life by just being near the Bladebreakers, but more specifically, Tyson.

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An explosion that echoed through the stone hallways made a purple-haired man jump to his feet, while his cell partner, an old man, stayed calm.

"We're going to be free men soon," Boris muttered hastily, rushing to the thick metal door and putting his ear to it. Their small, high-security cell had confined them for a few months, ever since the end of the BEGA tournament, where the police had discovered their malevolence and whisked them away.

"No matter how long they keep me locked in a cell," Voltaire spoke, a twisted smirk crossing his face, "I will always come back with a vengeance."

"We'll make everyone succumb to fear, like we had been so close to doing before. This time, we'll succeed." Boris smirked, insanity clear in his brown eyes.

Only a few moments passed before more explosions occurred; each one clearly increased in volume. Boris moved back from the door. Finally, the clinking of keys outside the containing room could be heard, and with a loud boom the door swung open, a boot having strongly kicked it out of the way. Viktor, the owner of said boot, took a step inside the cell, a powerful gun in his left hand. His bodyguards stood outside equipped with their own weapons, keeping watch in the nightmarishly long corridor blotted with metallic doors.

"That was excellent timing, Viktor," Voltaire stood, moving closer to the eighteen-year-old. "Only a day used to plan, then its execution - and you've pulled it off quite nicely."

"Did I not tell you I was a wicked genius?" Viktor replied, dramatically blowing smoke from the point of his gun, his constant smirk portraying his evil attribute. "It's gone smoother than a knife through warm butter so far; let's not have anything ruin my happy moment by waiting around. Vamoose!"

With that said, Viktor and the two convicts exited the cell and began their speedy escape from the large jail. Despite the security cameras being shot out, guards continually filed into the long corridor from both sides. Viktor took them down, firing bullets from his gun with precise aim, each time hitting their target. His bodyguards took care of the ones coming at them from the back, although they did not have the same highly perfected skills as their boss.

Leaping over the punctured, bloody corpses that scattered the floor, Viktor panted, "It's a shame that I haven't been able to besiege the jail completely with my own staff, otherwise we wouldn't have to waste time killing anybody." The sick thrill the pale-eyed man achieved from such a feat boosted his adrenaline, causing his quick breath and increased energy. "But it's more fun this way." He let out a laugh, his twisted smile never leaving his face. His eyes reflected the feral insanity deep within the disturbed human, his pupils almost invisible due to the minute size they had contracted to.

Entering into a grand room that connected several hallways including the one they had emerged from, more corpses lay on the floor. Some guards walked around, their left sleeves rolled up; each had an identical tattoo embedded on their forearms. They nodded to Viktor as he ran past, followed by a puffing Voltaire, a psychotic Boris, and his two regular bodyguards. Walls had large, imperfect holes here and there, the grey brick near the voids blackened by a film of soot left over from the explosion.

A loud siren sounded, echoing through the lifeless halls.

"It looks like we still have some resistance, sir," said the bodyguard in a deep, professional voice.

"No need to worry about that. You two take the prisoners outside. I'll take care of the nuisances that remain." With a billow of his long, black coat, Viktor took a different turn, disappearing to fulfill his desire for a bloodbath.

Two minutes later, the siren stopped blaring.

A final explosion sent a large section of the outside wall into non-existence eight minutes after the siren had been silenced. The convicts and the two bodyguards ran through the smoke. They did not have a long ways to go, as a helicopter was waiting for them. Viktor sat in the pilot's seat.

The four men climbed into the transportation contraption, buckling in as it lifted into the air, then began its fast journey back to where Viktor and his cronies had come.

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The door swung open, and Kai walked into his apartment, setting a bag of groceries on the wooden counter. He went back to close the door, and then began unpacking the items he'd purchased.

Kai grabbed one of the few bowls that was in the cupboard – which he had bought that day – and poured some fresh milk into it. A soft meow alerted him that Isabella had jumped up to sit on the counter, watching the bowl. She smelled the air hungrily, tail swishing silently.

"Bon appétit," Kai said, setting the light meal before the young cat. Isabella leapt forward, lapping up the liquid as if she'd never had anything so filling in her life. Kai paused to scratch her between the ears, and then went into the bathroom to take a shower. Twenty minutes later, Kai plopped down on the sofa with a contented look on his face, which was bare of paint.

Inside, he owned a smile as vivid as Tyson's. The warmth inside him had increased to the point where it should have been uncomfortable, but he shared attributes with the phoenix that made him similar to one internally, so the heat only caused him to feel like he had finally found his haven, his righteous environment.

He sighed quietly, closing his eyes. Only a few moments later, Kai's mind had slipped into the oblivion that was sleep. Although the silence threatened his unconscious state, trying to make him wake again, the warmth of Dranzer and the memory of his friend, Tyson, acted like a blockade to it, shielding Kai from the insomnia that was just waiting to claim him back.

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Flames crackled through the air, a conglomerate of red, yellow, blue, and white heated drops. Although more biased towards a reddish hue, they shone as one like a bright sun in the sky. A phoenix flew in gracefully silent loops around her human companion. The fire embraced the human; but it was a welcome element, an inferno that burned much inside the teenager's blood as it did around him. The silent dance between the supernatural and the realist went on in endless repetition; the beast, happy to have such close bonding; the human, cozy in the heated arms of the firestorm. The human beheld the staccato notes to a melody which the phoenix strung along musical ties, allowing the sharp sounds to relax; Kai's problems were being smoothed by the legendary creature.

An infinite amount of time passed before the gallant mythological firebird began to pull away. Kai felt as though he were a planet, suddenly unaffected by the star's gravity, drifting farther into space.

Dranzer's voice flooded the teenager's ears, the sweet flames of her intonations shielding his mind from the bitter cold, comforting him into relaxation.

_Kai, __something is wrong. A qualm grows inside of me, increasing as time passes. Please, wake up, and make sure that everything is alright._

'_But I'm safe with you.' _Kai protested, not wanting to leave Dranzer's presence. Their time together was heavenly, despite how the heat and flames contradicted that imagery.

_As much as I wish that was true, I cannot protect you while I am inside your mind; I must be a physical form__, or inside the beyblade, in order to fulfill my guardian status. _

'_Then let me summon you.'_

Kai then experienced something he hadn't heard in a long time. His phoenix companion's voice changed with worry. She screeched.

_There is no time! You must wake up immediately!_

A bit stunned, Kai watched her with his crimson eyes, realizing just how serious she was.

'…_Make sure you'll __stay with me…Deal?'_

_Yes, fine, now WAKE UP!_

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Kai's eyes opened, taking a moment to readjust. Quickly recalling the anxious tone of Dranzer's voice, as if she were still whispering in the back of his mind, he swung his legs off of the couch. As soon as the action had been completed, Kai felt something in his pocket vibrate. He pulled out his phone and frowned at it. It displayed the time to be a bit past one in the morning. Who would be calling at a time like this?

He flipped the conversational device open, scanning the screen for evidence of the caller. His eyes widened. Somebody had been desperately trying to contact him; they'd called eleven times. One recorded message was waiting for him. Confused, he slowly lifted the phone to his ear and listened.

"**New unheard message; twelve eighteen AM:"**

Crackling could be faintly heard in the background, as if the message were recorded outside.

"_Hey, Kai."_ It was Tyson, and he sounded both serious and nervous. He was in a rush, his breathing a bit uneven.

"_Listen, this is really important. I don't know if you saw the news this evening, but… Kai… somebody broke Voltaire and Boris out of jail." _

There was a pause. Kai's eyes widened for the second time that night, his heart instantly plummeting with the insane dose of fear that automatically shot through him.

"_It was a disaster… All of the guards were killed, even a high number of convicts; somebody was going to great lengths to bust them out. They blew the place to smithereens. Whoever they are, they're powerful. But you can hear the rest of the details from the news itself, the show's going on in a repetitive loop."_

The phoenix's counterpart felt sick to his stomach. It was not a usual emotion to overcome the stoic Russian, but he could not help but feel that way as images of his grandfather and Boris flashed through his mind. The heavy shadows in his apartment suddenly seemed as if they would rear back and leap at him at any moment.

"_That's not the only thing that worries me, though. You know that day when you discovered me summoning Dragoon__ in the snowy meadow?"_

Kai's mind dodged for a quick moment to the woods and meadow where he had initially found out what a summoning was, and what it looked like. The Dragoon faintly wrapped around Tyson's form was carved in his mind.

"_Well, he was telling me that he had a sense that something terrible was going to happen - being all mythological and stuff, he can do that - and it was going to be linked directly to you, and he didn't want me caught up in another mess I can't get out of. So he wanted me to stay away from you, which is why he showed contempt towards you. I didn't think much of it at the time, but right now, believe me; I'm kicking myself in the butt for not mentioning something sooner."_

Kai was a bit surprised. Normally, Dragoon seemed to be the type to stick by someone's side through thick and thin. The situation must have seemed thick as a castle wall if even **Dragoon **didn't want Tyson involved.

"_Look, I think… they might try to come after you again. Please forgive me for being a paranoid loser, but I'm coming over. I know it's super late, but I don't want to take chances. Hopefully I'll be able to find your apartment as quickly as I can. Stay safe, okay?" _

Tyson stopped talking, and for a split second, the crackling of the background was recorded into the message. _Click._

It went dead.

Chills ran up Kai's spine.

"**End of message."**

Kai slowly lowered the phone back down, his eyes fixed on the wall ahead of him, unseeing and blank. With an echoing snap, the phone folded shut again, its light going out after a few seconds had passed.

Fear paralyzed him, constricting him like a gigantic, powerful Amazon snake. It had been nearly forty-five minutes since Tyson had recorded his message. Kai thanked his elementary teachers for giving him the ability to add. The time it took to travel by public transit; the time he had to walk; the uncertainty of getting lost, as it was his first time here…

Knocking resonated from the other side of his apartment door, as if in accordance to his very thoughts. In a very uncharacteristic fashion, Kai jolted upwards in shock and anxiety, before getting to his feet. He walked to the door and flicked the switch beside it, poorly illuminating the room with the sad bulb that corresponded to said switch.

_Kai._

'_Dranzer, it's going to be okay now, isn't it? Tyson's here.'_

_Kai, this feeling I have; it is not going away. _

'_Try to calm down. Tyson'll come in and we'll have nothing to worry about then. You'll see; he's right outside.'_

There was no response, as Dranzer was trying to come to terms with herself.

The unnerved captain placed his pale hand on the doorknob, and with a fluid movement, turned the sphere under his palm, and began to pull it inwards.

"Tys-"

_DON'T OPEN THE DOOR!_

Dranzer's shriek was not alone in its loudness. It happened so fast; there was a bang, the door flew open (so strongly that surprisingly it did not come flying off of its hinges), and angry, threatening voices speared through the silence that had just previously been filled with Tyson's recorded monologue. Bodies surrounded him, metal clutches trapping his arms, his back, and his neck; and although he was very fit and trained in physical fighting, the enemy had ambushed him and overwhelmed him. Before he truly knew what had happened, a pain sharper than any blade in existence shot through his head.

The phoenix and her human counterpart cried out in response to the wound. In an instant, black clouds had rolled over Kai's vision.

"Lights out, kid."

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Several cars honked as the blue-haired Japanese teenager darted across a congested road illegally, weaving his way dexterously through the metal maze. He continued to jog once he reached the sidewalk, taking in his new environment. Tyson had passed the area a couple of times before, but it was still unfamiliar. The male slowed down a bit to take out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. He unwrinkled it and peered at the address in desperation, half hoping that it would somehow point him in the right direction.

'_At least I'm on the right street this time,' _Tyson thought, putting the paper away again. He chanted the address repeatedly under his breath, clearly having memorized it by looking at it so much.

After Kai had told him that he would be moving out, Tyson had dumped their breakfast dishes in the sink. He exited the kitchen, and spotted the ad sitting on the table where he'd slammed it down. Checking to make sure that Kai wasn't looking, the blue-haired teen ran to get a piece of paper and a pen, and scrawled the address down messily. He remembered thinking that Kai would never give him the address personally, and although he somewhat felt like a stalker, he couldn't stop himself.

'_And it's a good thing I acted like a stalker too, huh!' _Tyson shook his head, feeling pathetic and relieved at the same time. Several buildings passed him by. One building's number caught his attention, and he ran up to it, practically flinging himself through the doors.

And he'd forgotten that security would be monitoring the entrance. Of_ course_, how did he _expect_ to just _waltz right in_, uninvited? He pulled on the next set of doors, knowing that they would be locked unless he had a key, or unless he dialed up. Tyson unfolded the page, praying that he'd written down Kai's apartment number.

He had. Practically punching the correct digits into the keypad, a quiet buzzing could be heard. Tyson stopped moving and breathing so that he could hear perfectly, anticipation and worry coursing through his body.

But the phone kept ringing and ringing, until finally, it stopped.

Kai wasn't answering the phone. _'Damn that bastard!' _Tyson swore mentally, tears nearly fabricating in his frustration and panic. _'Why did I come all this way without thinking about how I'd actually get INSIDE? Damn it all!' _

Exiting the building, Tyson paused outside of the doors, a few tears threatening to fall. He furiously rubbed them away with his jacket sleeve, a pathos frown framed with anger on his countenance.

_Tyson. Summon me._

'_Dragoon?' _Tyson's eyes widened with shock and confusion. _'Why?'_

_I can help you get inside. _

'_I don't know how you'll be able to do it… but I trust you!' _Tyson whipped out his beyblade, staring at the powerful, coiled dragon in the centre. He closed his eyes. A moment later, and he was submerged in another world, standing atop a thin pillar in the middle of a gigantic canyon. Wind threatened to knock him off balance, but he had experience with the element, and stood his ground. His bangs and ponytail were blown around by the invisible force, like an adoring father would have ruffled a child's. His cap was long since forgotten, already a tiny blue-and-red dot far below him.

Dragoon seemed to come from nowhere, soaring towards him. Tyson outstretched his arms, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

For a second, unbelievable power flooded Tyson's system, before it vanished. A ghostly phantom form separated from him, slithering through the air. It seeped through the glass as if it didn't exist, unseen by those that did not know of the mythological creature's being. Dragoon paused after he'd floated straight through the second set of doors. A beautifully blue aura engulfed the dragon and the doors, and an audible click could be heard.

Tyson, trying to act as casually as he could and strode through the entrance, easily pulling open the now unlocked lobby doors. Dragoon twisted and turned, returning to his bit-chip as if pulled by the force of a vacuum.

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The dark hallway stunting his vision, the Japanese blader tried to make his way through the corridor, peering at the numbers on the apartment doors.

Finally coming to a stop, Tyson squinted up at the apartment's number to double check, and then knocked on the door. The blue-haired teenager got chills up his spine as the door creaked open, identical to the ominous way its horror-movie-prop-relatives swung inwards at the simplest touch.

"Kai, it's me!" Tyson called out, hoping that his nerves couldn't be heard through his voice. He took a few steps inside, trying to feel in front of him for any sort of solid due to his lack of vision. His foot got caught underneath a foreign object, launching him forward.

"Oof!" Tyson grunted, as he found himself doing a face-plant with the apartment floor.

"You'd think the guy would keep his apartment relatively clean, so that people don't end up killing themselves! I thought he was more organized than this. And he dares to call **me **sloppy," Tyson muttered to himself. He sat up unceremoniously, whining over his ass, before falling forward onto his knees to inspect the object he'd tripped over. He would have to move it so he wouldn't fall over it again while searching for some sort of light.

Tyson set his hands on the object. After a quick moment of patting and investigating with said hands, he came to the conclusion that the solid was, indeed, quite large. Actually, he thought, it was almost Tyson's own size.

He moved his hands to the left, noting that the object was not flat-surfaced, and it had soft coverings on it. Tyson's fingers reached forward, suddenly brushing against another object. No, they were quite the same object, he came to understand.

His warm fingertips gently pressed against something soft, cooler than his own hand. A finger edged to the end of this object, and that's when it hit him.

Realization blew through his veins like an absolute zero blizzard, freezing all of the blood within him.

His heart began to beat frantically in his ears, creating ominous background music for the young adult.

His finger was resting upon a jaw bone, his other fingers pressed against a face.

His left hand was placed on an attached chest.

Tyson flung himself backward faster than a bolt of lightning determined to reach earth, panic completely consuming him. He stumbled up, too scared to say anything. Careful to step over the body, he fumbled along the wall to try and find some sort of light switch. He prayed that there would be one.

A dim light flooded the room, enabling Tyson's vision to work again. Never being more scared in his life, Tyson immediately laid eyes upon the body he had tripped over.

"Oh my God…"

The body belonged to none other than Kai, lying as still as a statue on the ground. The blue-haired blader was immediately at his side, not sure where to start, what to do. His worst fears had come true.

"Kai! Please, say something if you can hear me!" Tyson leant over him, grabbed Kai's lifeless wrist, and searched for his pulse. He mentally breathed a sigh of relief as he felt it fluttering lightly against his fingertips.

The sluggish yet stable pulsation caused several emotions to emerge within Tyson, as he continued to scan Kai's form for any sign of the cause of his unconsciousness.

First of all was relief; if Kai had died… No, he wouldn't even allow himself to think of it.

Secondly, he found it to be comforting and serene to be able to feel his captain's heart beat; the very life he worried for held in his hand. He frowned, doubting that another opportunity such as this would come by.

Finally, he was scared. Scared that if he let go, the heart within the ice prince would cease to pulse.

With a firm grip around Kai's wrist, fingers deeply indented against the veins as if to ensure that the pulse was not going to go away, Tyson's frown deepened. Kai had some good number of bruises and scratches, a few of which needed to be taken care of soon, but none that he could see would cause such a state.

The extremely pale face of his captain, free from the usual war-paint, was frozen in an emotionless, blank expression; it reminded Tyson of an android who'd just had its data chip completely cleared. There was evidence of a subconscious frown drawn on Kai's lips and eyebrows.

Kai's face was tranquil, and Tyson found that he couldn't look away from it. He analyzed the face for a moment later, realizing that his captain had a great physical and natural beauty about him. He was intriguing, mysterious, and, although Tyson would _never__**, ever,**__**ever**_ say this out loud, quite physically attractive. Well, not just _"quite"_, but _"very"._

He'd admitted to himself that Kai was, indeed, his best friend; he could not come up with any other explanation as to why he reacted so strongly to the Hiwatari's absence.

Tyson sighed, the stirred wind shifting a few hairs out of Kai's face. Leaning a bit closer, Tyson brushed the rest of the silvery bangs to the side, not sure what to do with his unconscious team mate.

Crimson that had been hidden underneath Kai's bangs caught his attention. A couple of thin streams of blood emerged from Kai's hairline and fringe. The droplets were conglomerating underneath his eye, giving him the imagery of bloody tears. Some ventured off of the side of his face, meeting with the beckoning pull of gravity. A large, plum-coloured, disfigured circle was present on his temple.

Immediately, Tyson began to run his hand through Kai's hair, unavoidably trailing through the amount of blood present. He brushed against an unnaturally large lump that sent shivers up his spine. Kai's features tightened in a subconscious wince.

The blue-haired teenager pulled his hand away; his worry and panic were back, full force. Tyson wound an arm around Kai's shoulders and the other underneath his knees, sufficiently scooping Kai up and placing him on the plain sofa not too far away.

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and flicked it open, punching in a nine and a one, before cancelling the call.

'_He'll kill me if I __call an ambulance,' _Tyson thought, _'so I guess I might as well call Gramps for advice before I do anything like that… It's not like he's dying, right?' _He threw a glance over his shoulder, as if to somehow _see_ the pulse in Kai's neck, before dialling a different number into the phone with his shaky, bloodstained fingers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The clacking of professional footwear on the marble floor echoed through the bright corridor, before said sounds stopped. A pair of knocks resonated on a wooden surface.

"Come in!" A voice called from inside the room.

Voltaire, Boris, and several security guards entered the office, helping themselves to seats around a desk. Viktor was already seated, typing away with Godspeed on his laptop. It was almost a Kenny-like image, except for the fact that he did not have the appearance of a genius.

"So, I assume you're enjoying your freedom?" Viktor asked, flicking his eyes over the top of his screen at the visitors for a brief moment.

"Oh, quite," Voltaire replied.

"Great! Now, time to get down to business." A series of clicks interrupted the statement, and a snap sounded with the folding of the laptop.

"What's the plan?" Boris said gruffly, earning a smirk from the 'boss'.

* * *

"Excellent work, again. Couldn't have done better myself." Voltaire praised subtly, albeit unlike him.

"Why, thank you." Viktor made to stand, but froze in his place, flabbergasted.

Boris was pointing a loaded gun at his chest. Viktor's own guards stood behind him, their weapons at the ready. However, they were not attacking the threatening man; they looked as if they were preparing to kill their own boss, too.

"What's going on here?" Viktor demanded shakily, inching backward.

"Don't move, maggot," Boris spat, tilting his weapon threateningly.

"Voltaire!" Viktor barked, sharply turning to look at him. "I think you owe me an explanation!"

"No, there's no need to say anything to a young'un like you." Voltaire spoke with his eyes closed, as if addressing someone of a lowly class. He rolled his chair back and put his feet up on the polished, wooden surface. "However, I must commend you for showing me the fruits of your imagination. I will most certainly be including them in my plans."

An understanding look flashed through Viktor's pale green eyes, and his casually demonic smirk stretched across his face.

"Ah, you've caught on, have you? Well, you always were smart," Voltaire continued, "but not smart nor evil enough to outmatch me."

A bead of sweat stumbled down the side of the green-haired teenager's face. "I can't believe I played nice." Viktor began to slowly move his hand towards his pocket.

"You'll have lots of time to mull it over in hell." Voltaire's old, wrinkled face crinkled even more as a distinctive, malevolent look crossed his countenance.

"If you manage to outsmart my plans, which I doubt you will be able to," Viktor continued, "I'll applaud your evil genius."

"Trust me, you'll be clapping so hard from that fiery pit, you'll cause the world's biggest avalanche."

Boris cocked his gun. The click ricocheted through the room like an echo screamed within a deep, narrow canyon.

Another bead of sweat followed suit of the first. Finally, the tension between the two sides snapped. Viktor grabbed the edge of his gun and whipped it out of his pocket.

The gun fell from his frozen hand, clattering on the floor. The deafening bang had been so sudden and so loud that he hadn't even registered the bullet being fired and lodged within him.

The green-haired adult collapsed to the floor, no longer among the living.

Voltaire stood up and walked slowly, stopping before the corpse.

"And that's why you don't play nice with us. Because we fight down and dirty." Voltaire sneered at the deceased male, and then turned to his cronies.

"Boris, inform the other security guards that they have a new boss. And you," he waved his hand at his other new employees lazily, "clean up this mess. I'm not paying you double his wage for nothing."

* * *

The first thing he noticed was the black hole where his heart should have been.

The second thing he noticed was that he no longer owned a human body. He was a block of ice concealing that super-massive black hole.

The third thing he noticed was that he was completely and utterly alone.

He searched every crevice of his dead mind for a trace of the heat he had gotten so attached to, so used to, but found nothing but emptiness and the ferocity of the biting cold.

Crimson eyes fluttered open, staring at the ceiling. He was, somehow, lying on the couch. He didn't care why or how he got there. He didn't even care to check and see if he still had a pulse. He'd lost everything.

His arm was hanging over the side of the sofa, his body rigid in his resting place. Rigid as an icicle in subzero temperatures.

A noise somewhat caught his attention. His blood red eyes shifted to look to the left. A familiar teenager sat on the rickety barstool at the pale kitchen counter, caressing a white cat's head. The heavy purring reached Kai's ears, but did not go through them.

Kai automatically swung his legs off the side of the sofa, standing up. Every bone ached in his body, every muscle, every cell of skin. It felt as if an atomic bomb had exploded inside his head after being roughly shoved in through the ear. He was dizzy and slightly short of breath. But all that didn't matter.

He didn't hear the sharp intake of breath from the other male, nor did he feel himself falling.

Before he knew it, he was seated back on the couch. He sensed a presence beside him.

"Kai, you need to stay seated for a couple more days. A house doctor came by and told me that you're suffering from a serious blow to the head. What happened?" A sincere voice, quite unlike the speaker, flooded through Kai's head. He could hardly understand the words, their meanings. It was hard piecing them together.

After a moment, Kai spoke through icy lips. "They came." He stared at Tyson's face, finding it more relaxing than anything else to look at.

"What did they do to you?"

Kai inhaled and exhaled as if timed with a metronome, almost robotic.

"Dranzer's gone."

"Oh, Kai… I'm so sorry."

The first emotion he felt since awakening from his comatose unconsciousness was the pain. The pain of having to say the truth out loud, as if just doing so engraved the harsh reality in diamond. His eyelids closed over his eyes, afraid that Tyson would see the terrible hurt within them. He had lost a loved one, had his phoenix torn from him when they had just reached the peak of their relationship. Kai had been ripped in half as easily as if he were a piece of unwanted newspaper. And it had been easy because he had exposed his heart.

How was he to survive without a heart?

He would_ never_ lend his heart out again.

That way, there would be a zero percent chance of something stealing it away from him.

But how could he withdraw something that wasn't there anymore?

Slowly, the ice partially began to melt. Kai hadn't noticed, but Tyson had wrapped his arms around the living icicle, trying to give him something to hold on to for dear life.

Warmth.

That only thought that crossed his blank mind.

Warm. Tyson was warm.

Without a second thought, the stoic teenager curled up against his best friend, burrowing his aching head against Tyson's neck. The arms around him tightened, drawing him in close.

The silver-haired teenager paused to think for a moment.

Tyson was almost like a second Dranzer.

How was he supposed to survive when his heart was God knows where?

Kai didn't know the answer, but he did know that being with his Tyson was a comfort beyond relief; his only assembly of Earth on this frigid, unknown planet on the opposite side of the universe.

Kai rested his head in the nook of the World Champion's neck. He smelled good. And he was comfy. He didn't care if Tyson thought he was weird anymore; nothing else mattered. Tyson was his lifeline.

Kai linked his arms around Tyson's neck, letting out a sigh of relief as he drifted into unconsciousness once more. Although dreams of a tormented Dranzer plagued him, the burden seemed lighter when he was in Tyson's shielding arms.

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**That last section was**** … extremely dark, if I do say so myself. **

**Happy Valentine's Day.**** Ah, the irony; my cat had to be put down. Thus, I have had a very,**_** very**_** shitty day. **

**So please, if you want to make me feel better, **_**REVIEW.**_** Please? It might make me update faster. Tell me what you think!**

**Phoenix-Roar**


	3. A Terrible Mistake

Firstly, a great big thank-you to everyone who reviewed! Secondly, thanks to everybody for reading my story. I appreciate both efforts very much, and I'm sorry it took so long to update.

**Disclaimer:** I, under the pen name Phoenix-Roar, do not own Beyblade – That is, I do not own any characters, the plot of the show/manga, names, etc. Takao Aoki owns Beyblade (I think? That's the name that's on the spine of the manga, anyway… If somebody could clear this up for me, I'd be grateful). I am not making any profits whatsoever from writing this. I am just writing it for the entertainment of others and to improve my literary skills. I thank for providing me with a server to share my fanfictions with others that are willing to read them.

**Forewarning:** **Pairing is** **TYKA. Some swearing, some scenes not suitable for younger audiences. The usual. Ye be still allowed to press the back button up yonder..!**

* * *

_Kai rested his head in the nook of the World Champion's neck. He smelled good. And he was comfy. He didn't care if Tyson thought he was weird anymore; nothing else mattered. Tyson was his lifeline._

_Kai linked his arms around Tyson's neck, letting out a sigh of relief as he drifted into unconsciousness once more. Although dreams of a tormented Dranzer plagued him, the burden seemed lighter when he was in Tyson's shielding arms._

_How to survive without a Heart_

_Chapter III_

_A Terrible Mistake_

He felt numb.

He wasn't sure if he was to blame the numbness entirely on the cold, or on the missing half of his soul.

Kai's hands were warm… He was tugging on something with all of his might, with all of the power he possessed.

He held a dematerialized, miniature form of Dranzer between his hands; the source of the warmth. His other half.

The unclear, blurry phoenix cawed and screeched, her voice lost to some nonexistent wind. She wanted to go back to him.

This goal was unachievable. A pair of silhouetted hands caged her from the back, trying to pull Dranzer away from Kai. But this, he would not have! The tug-of-war battle raged, each side as equally strong as the other.

But Kai was _exhausted_ without Dranzer's supporting energy; he felt dizzy and nauseous. Dranzer whined like a hurt canine, as she was slowly, but surely, being pulled back into the darkness. Away from Kai.

A pair of arms stretched from a being standing beside the Russian, their hands clasping firmly but harmlessly around the phoenix. A quick glance allowed Kai the vague image of blue hair. Messy ponytail. Stormy eyes. A familiar, warm smile.

Tyson.

The combined strength began to reel Dranzer in to Kai's side, happy chirps escaping the little red bird.

However, just as Dranzer was getting close, the opposing hands began to multiply. Arms of shadows shot from the darkness to help their comrades steal the bird away.

The heat seeped from Kai's fingers, withdrawing as the shadow people pulled her out of sight.

Dranzer was crying.

Kai looked to the side. At least he had someone to fall back on..?

Tyson was gone.

Although he found it hard to believe, he wanted to cry, too.

Kai collapsed into a ball, hugging his knees to his chest.

It felt like an eternity had passed. Despite no tears having run down his face, they were conglomerating around him, as if they were able to just seep out of him. As if he was the opposite of a sponge.

The tears he hadn't cried froze around his legs, welding him to the ground. He could have broken free at this point, but didn't.

Kai had no intention to move.

Eventually, his whole being became one with the ice. He had nothing to worry about anymore; all he had to do was say nothing, do nothing, and feel nothing. And that was all he wanted.

* * *

It was only a nightmare, despite how real it had felt. 

He was warm, he had to admit; it melted the cold residue from his icy dream. A nice but firm cushion kept him comfortable, his source of coziness. He frowned slightly; did he even _own_ a cushion anymore? Kai's eyes opened slowly. Concentrating for a moment, he tried to figure out what it was he was looking at through half-open, blurry, tired eyes. The sight utterly confused him, his not-yet-awake brain telling him that he should be seeing sunbeams, or his apartment.

Obscure memories slowly dripped back into his aching head, forming a puddle of random events.

Voltaire and Boris were free once more.

Tyson had given him a warning call.

Thugs broke into his apartment, and bashed him unconscious.

Dranzer was gone.

Kai felt a stabbing pain in his heart – correction, where his heart _should_ have been – and closed his eyes for another set of minutes.

His mind was still hidden under a dreamy veil. He missed Dranzer more than anything in the world; it hurt him to think about what life would be like without his bit-beast.

Where was Dranzer? Was she hurt, being abused? Lastly, would he ever find her again?

What was he going to do now?

He pulled out a foggy list that he'd fabricated in his mind the evening before.

He would never give out his heart again.

Now, to engrave more details into it:

1. Never smile again.

2. Never laugh again. Exception: cold-hearted, malevolent laughter.

3. Disengage from all physical, biological interactions.

4. Never cry, either in reality, or in the dream state. No exceptions.

Feeling a bit more sated with his desire to cut every emotion out of his life, Kai cracked open his eyes again, and digested the sight that had previously puzzled him.

He was, in fact, face-to-face with Tyson's strong, tanned neck. As in, he could practically _see _his skin cells going through mitosis, he was _that_ close. A good surface area of the Russian's unblemished, perfect face was resting on the Japanese blader's shoulder. A chest rose and fell slowly beneath him, a strong heart emitting a lazy beat within it. Kai laxly clutched Tyson's other shoulder, his other arm coiled behind Tyson's neck, as if he'd… he'd… hugged… him…?

Kai Hiwatari, _hug_ someone? No, it was just impossible.

But it had happened. The flashback smacked clumsily into the side of Kai's skull, even though he'd willed it strongly to stay away. Once Kai had realized that Tyson was a warm object, he'd flung himself at him, without thinking twice about it.

Kai pressed his forehead to Tyson's jacketed shoulder, groaning quietly. He could feel a faint heat settle across his face in embarrassment. His several-years-younger self was standing in the back of his mind, pointing and laughing at him. The cold-hearted, merciless Kai that the Bladebreakers had first encountered sneered at him, telling him how pathetic he'd become, and how he shouldn't even know what a hug felt like. The somewhat thawed Kai felt a twang of jealousy for his past self, which brought a bout of shame and disgust over his new self. The cold-hearted Kai was right; he had become a dependant weakling.

He'd have to become cold again; he just couldn't risk making – or keeping - any friends. It wouldn't be so hard to do after getting rid of Tyson; all he would have to do is roll into a ball and wait for the icy transformation to take over him.

Kai paused for a moment, feeling much crappier now that his self-hatred had opened up again, like an injury just beginning to scab over. Wasn't this type of contact against the rules he'd just reinforced? He urged himself to move.

Tyson shifted subtly, causing Kai to tilt his head upwards in alarm. He watched Tyson's head slowly roll the other way, the tanned face tightening slightly in the wake-up process.

Kai was _not _going to go back on his list, even if it meant giving up the luxury that was Tyson.

He detangled himself from the other young adult, slithering out of the cage that was Tyson's arms. With a weak heave, Kai managed to practically roll off of the couch.

Maybe moving so soon wasn't such a good idea.

Fireworks were going off in his head, painfully colliding with his already-sore skull, thanks to his disobedient flashback. He was still disoriented from being brutally mauled. His stomach did a couple of gymnastic moves – and the room was spinning – and suddenly, he was lying on his side, the cool floor greeting him with an unwelcome attitude.

He felt like a waterlogged shirt, heavy with fatigue. He'd been in worse situations; there was no excuse to lie around and be _dependant_ on others for his needs. Shaky arms slowly pushed him up, and he crashed against the nearest wall, using it as support.

Where was he even going? Washing his face would do some good. Staggering with the aid of the walls to the bathroom, Kai clutched the sides of the sink to keep himself from teetering over. He regarded his reflection through closing eyes.

A pale, dreary face stared at him, a cross of indifference and regret in its crimson eyes. So, Tyson had cleaned the blood up, and bandaged a section of his forehead, near his eye. Guilt began to bubble up; Kai urged the cold wind inside of him to snuff it out, not being able to take any more bad emotions in one day.

'_What an idiot. He shouldn't have helped me.'_

"Kai!" Feeling like he had a hangover, Kai cringed at the voice. The socked footsteps stomped through his apartment, bringing the owner of the voice closer. Finally, a blue-haired teen poked his head into the bathroom curiously, watching a statue appear to be looking at itself in a cracked mirror. Oh, no, wait, that was Kai.

Tyson stepped closer to the statue. "How are you doing?"

Kai didn't answer.

"Alrighty then, I'll take that as a 'yup, I'm fine, Tyson! I'm glad you saved my life!' Yeaaaah… Hey, buddy; seriously, you're looking a bit green around the gills. You should really go back to sleep."

The crimson-eyed captain threw him an automated glance, seeming unsure if he should bother listening to the other or not. His pale, shaken hands released the porcelain sink's cool edges. He swayed in the air's current for a moment, before haphazardly walking towards Tyson, colliding shoulders with him by accident in his attempt to brush past him in his vertigo state.

Tyson turned to see Kai leaning against the wall, looking as if he were ready to buckle at any given instant. The tanned Japanese champion could not ignore the ushering from his alacritous side, and darted to the increasingly limp figure, securing one of Kai's chilly arms around his strong shoulders while hauling the slightly older teenager to stand weakly on his own two feet. He managed to get the silvery-slate-haired figure to the couch, before said male collapsed entirely. He sighed deeply, cracking open one crimson eye to get a blurry look at the form hovering over him.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" Tyson asked, worry undulating in his voice.

Kai closed his eyes, his face seeming as if it was chiselled from a slab of stone.

"Kinomiya, get the fuck out of my apartment."

* * *

"I thought I told you to **get out**." The faint murmur of a sleep-trodden voice reached Tyson's ears some hours after the incident, and said blue-haired teen turned his head to take notice of his best friend's awakening state. A blanket lay pooled around his waist, as if he hadn't paid it any mind when he sat up to drill at Tyson with his foggy words. 

"You should know me better than that, Kai!" Tyson grinned in a devil-may-care fashion. "I don't listen to anything anyone says."

A sock was flung at his blue head.

"Hey!" Tyson growled in amusement, dodging his own smelly sock which he had left strewn on Kai's new carpet. He dodged the opposite way when a shiny, stylish cell phone went flying past his head and clattered loudly on the kitchenette floor. He assumed that nothing more would be chucked at him, as there was really nothing left to throw, but he was sadly mistaken. Something else flew at him with more speed than previously thought possible, and before he had time to react, it collided with his forehead. A visibly reddening welt grew on his forehead where a sharp edge had hit him, and his eyes instantly watered. A hand quickly smacked to cover the temporary swelled injury, and he whined.

"Ow! What the hell is your problem, Kai!" He shouted the question to sound as if it were more of a demand. Tyson squinted against the pain, trying to locate the item that he had been flogged with in the other teen's ire. He got off of the rickety kitchen stool that he had become accustomed to in the past few days, and retrieved an extremely familiar item.

"Oi…! Dranzer's not something to be thrown like that! You of all people should know…" The blue blade was decorated with red streaks, and had a non-existent bit-chip. The metallic blade glinted majestically in the light. Tyson could hardly recall ever being allowed to touch it before; it was slightly warm, he was surprised to discover. Whether that was just from the heat accumulated when whipped at breakneck speed by Kai, or whether it was because it was the home of a phoenix's ancient spirit, he wasn't sure; but he knew that it was trademark to Kai's blade, and Kai's blade only.

"Hn." An indifferent grumble brought Tyson's attention back to the beyblade's furious owner. He had his arms crossed and was glaring at what appeared to be the back of the couch, or perhaps a spider on the wall.

Tyson huffed and was next to Kai in an instant. "Injured or not, you're coming with me." He grabbed Kai's cool hand, much to the other's surprise, and dragged him off of the couch, rendering the blanket in a crumpled fashion on the floor. The older teen stumbled dizzily as he was pulled through the apartment, speechless, tugging at Tyson's hand, willing it to release his own. However, Tyson would not agree, and Kai was trapped in that heavenly warmth that he had tried so hard to block out.

They reached the supposed bedroom, the tiny area that could easily be mistaken for a closet. Tyson dragged Kai inside, shutting the door behind them.

Tyson fumbled for the switch, eventually finding it after a minute or so had passed. The new light from the bare bulb made him squint for a second. Kai was seated on the floor; his legs sprawled out, back propped up against a dusty, blank wall. His head was tilted so that he could watch Tyson's face, but his expression was blank, catatonic, eerily placid; as if he was done. Finished. As if he had reached an end. The beautifully red eyes, slightly obscured by silvery-grey bangs, were looking at him, but not seeing him. It scared Tyson. What had brought about such a change in the Russian?

"Okay, Kai. You need to get something out of your system. I know that you've been finding it very hard to cope with life this past week or so, but you're really starting to worry me. I don't know if you know this, but I'm going to try my best to get Dranzer back for you. Don't even think for a **second** that I wouldn't care!" Tyson held Dranzer out to Kai, displaying the empty space where the phoenix should have resided, a serious expression set on his countenance. He leant in, forcefully prodding the blue blade in Kai's general direction, encouraging him to take it from his warm hand.

When Kai didn't even so much as blink at him, Tyson grew frustrated. He took a step back and slammed Dranzer into his launcher, a metallically groaned protest resounding as a result of the action. Kai's features hardened further; he shifted to sit up without the aid of the wall. He glared at Tyson with sudden attention, anger burning in his wine-coloured eyes.

"What—"

But the grinding rip of a cord cut off Kai's remark. Air around the blue blade whipped sharply, as the object of attention flew off the end of Tyson's launcher with a feeble spin. It landed on the hardwood floor with a clatter, instantly wobbling, like an abused animal. It swerved towards its master slowly, losing all of its spin as it reached his foot.

The phoenix's owner got to his feet, picking up the slightly warm blade in between gentle fingers. He glared at Tyson and snapped Dranzer into his own launcher. It fit like a perfect, golden ring gently sliding onto a slender digit. No disagreeing sounds came from the blade this time; it was back where it belonged.

What came next was not to be unexpected. A bloodcurdling bang, only moments later followed by a cacophony of metallic ringing and crashes, resounded throughout the apartment.

It was only a few minutes later that a white paw clawed underneath the door. Scratching and bumping ensued, and finally, the door opened a crack. Isabella the cat snuck inside in a surreptitious, clandestine manner. Neither blader noticed the white cat until she pounced on Dragoon while it was circling Dranzer, effectively trapping it between her hunting clutches. She stared down at the spinning thingamajig, smacking it with her right paw to slow it down to a ceased position. She licked the blade a few times in interest; as far as human guessing allowed, she probably mistook the white paint for the sweet milk she pined after.

The two bladers caught their breaths quickly after such a short battle. Kai sunk to the floor again, the somewhat sturdy blue beyblade retreating to its home in Kai's open palm. It was slightly damaged – cracked and chipped in several places, mostly on the sharp attack ring - but what else could he expect, going up against the world champion with less than half of his original power?

Still, he couldn't deny the warmth that had begun to override the cold anger flowing through his body. He closed his fingers around Dranzer's beyblade gently but firmly. The fact that _somebody else_ had launched Dranzer set something off in him, and he just couldn't control the urge to steal Dranzer back and launch her himself. Even if the other person was Tyson. Then something clicked in Kai's brain… Tyson had done it on purpose, to get Kai to fight back; to get him to battle alongside Dranzer again; to light that lonely candle of hope within Kai which had been efficiently snuffed out.

Tyson rescued Dragoon from Isabella's brutal mauling, and examined the white beyblade with a somewhat shocked expression, a microscopic smile – so unlike his usually face-splitting, Cheshire-cat grins – playing on his face. "You actually put a dent in it." He looked upon the area missing a chunk for another second, and then shifted his bluish-grey eyes to scrutinize the other blader. Kai's eyes were half-lidded, almost as if he were ready to fall asleep, sitting in this stuffy, confining closet-bedroom.

There was more silence between them. There seemed to be a lot of it these days. Tyson broke it. "I promise I'll get Dranzer back for you." He stepped closer to Kai slowly.

"Tyson…" Kai began with a slightly hoarse and husky voice, "I don't need your help…"

"Yes, you **do**!" Tyson snapped back, infuriated. He stomped over to Kai's slouched form and stared down at his silver-and-navy-haired team member angrily. "Stop trying to act so… so **independent**!" Tyson hollered, spitting out the last word as if it were bitterly poisonous. "I know you like feeling all** macho** but you need to know when to **accept** other peoples' **help**!"

Kai would not meet Tyson's angry eyes; he looked off into the corner with a troubled, indecisive gaze. The red orbs were tired, half-concealed by his eyelids.

"I promise you, Kai…" Tyson said, sinking sadly to his knees beside the older teen, "we'll figure this mess out together. I know it sounds cliché, but I really do mean it. And I hope I'm getting through to you with this. You mean so much to me. Did I ever tell you that? Yeah, that's cliché, too, but you aren't my best friend for nothing! Not just anybody gets to be the world champ's best friend!" Tyson let out a small, unconvincing chuckle. He continued to ramble pointlessly, his voice eventually ceasing to break the silence. He let his forehead fall to meet Kai's bony shoulder, closing his eyes.

"Kai. I hope you listened to everything I just said, because I meant every word of it. The first thing we're gonna do tomorrow is tell the others about this whole mess, and we'll figure it out from there." Tyson's voice followed a decrescendo, morphing into a murmur. Even if it wasn't visible, Kai was listening to every word that fell from the world champ's mouth, and had to strain to hear the rest of his monologue. "Kenny'll have some mumbo-jumbo computer tricks to pull" – Kai smirked a little – "and we'll consult whoever we need to, to find out where Dranzer is, and to help you. Maybe a psychiatrist would be beneficial…" Tyson tilted his head upwards so that his chin was resting on the shoulder. He let his eyes roam the profile of that porcelain face. He caught the slight glare he was receiving for his last phrase and smiled innocently back, staring directly into those drilling eyes. "Ha-ha, or maybe not!" He stood up and resisted offering Kai his hand. He couldn't expect Kai to suddenly act chummy.

"We should probably get to bed… You might not be tired, but I'm pooped," Tyson sighed, dragging both of his hands down his face, making a stupid expression that resembled a zombie's. "Watching over you takes a lot more out of me than I ever thought humanly possible!"

And thus, five minutes later, both were resigned on the couch after a small struggle to get Kai to the main room. Moonlight flooded the room, large patches of the floor illuminated. They were sitting side by side. Kai attempted to find his own corner of the couch to sleep on, but Tyson grabbed his shoulders and pulled him backwards, splaying both of them out in a lazy, half-sitting, half-lying position.

Kai didn't know what to make of the situation. This was going against the rules he made earlier, but he _really _didn't want to move. Tyson was just too comfortable. He didn't want to give up on his rules, either. Deciding to leave the thinking for the morning, he shut down instantly, as if somebody had pulled the power plug to the computer that was Kai.

* * *

Men in black uniforms stood silently on a lookout point, a faint wind rolling through the sky. Some others were standing on either side of the road, positioned near their own cars, watching intently for any traffic. The trunk of the car nearest the rocky edge of the cliff opened, and something was hauled out of it by three of the men. They carried it carefully to the edge, and with a heave, threw the suspiciously large bag over the side. Eight seconds later, a faint splash resounded back up the cliff's edge, and all of the men piled back into the cars to drive away. 

Staccato tapping was the only music to be heard in the silence of the richly-furnished room, as an older man with greyed hair sat at a desk. The oak-and-glass door opened slowly – the ubiquitous silence kept at bay due to its freshly oiled hinges - and a svelte, slender female walked through the doorway, high heels clacking noisily on the stone floor. She took a few steps in, and bowing her head respectfully, she said through dark-red lips, "Sir, the employee-in-charge sent on the mission you ordered is calling in to inform you of their progress. If you will, please respond on line six." With a flick of her long, black hair, she exited the room, a gentle click from the door acting as a period in the sentence that was her interruption.

Voltaire picked up the phone beside him and pressed the appropriate button with a stubby, calloused, discoloured finger, and resumed his bored, synchronized tapping with the other hand.

"What is it," he barked into the phone.

"Sir," spoke the other man, "we've completed the task. There were no witnesses."

"Good," Voltaire said, albeit uninterestedly. "When the squadron gets back, I have another mission to be taken care of. It's time to initiate the project."

With a clatter, the archaic man dropped the sleek black phone back onto the disk-shaped receiver without waiting for a reply. He swirled his chair to the side and stood. It was time for a visit to the laboratories.

Now in a completely separate area of the building, incredibly blinding white lights gave the endless room the feel of a modern-day science lab. All kinds of fancy-looking equipment were strewn across tables, scientist employees busy at work with them. Although he had never worked a day down here in his life, he knew where to go.

Taking up a large portion of the gigantic room was a thick glass tube, at least forty meters in diameter. Inside the tube was another tube, and another inside that one; it went on with this pattern until there were seven extremely thick layers of safety glass. The most inward tube was filled with a curious pale-green liquid that glowed like a fluorescent soup. Floating idly in the borsht was a large ball of contrasting red light, almost like another sun. Voltaire stared at it through narrowed eyes. A shape of a majestic phoenix imprinted itself into his vision. When he blinked, he could still see the powerful image of Dranzer. He opened his eyes again to stare at the stolen bit-beast, as if it were an animal at a zoo on display for the public to see for their pure enjoyment.

Although they had not done very many tests on her yet, she already seemed weak. The first time they enclosed her in the container, she struggled, and nearly managed to break out. She screeched as loudly as she possibly could as the strange green liquid poured like acid rain upon her graceful form, and for the first three hours of being immersed in the substance, she swam around frantically, ramming her skull against the glass and clawing at it with all of the strength she possessed. Still, without the combined power of her owner, she could not escape.

Voltaire was still planning things out mentally, hence why he hadn't done anything to Dranzer yet. Oh, but he was an evil man… He smiled at his grandson's mythological companion.

"Don't you worry, my pretty," he cooed, tapping on the glass like an annoying child in an aquarium store, "you won't be bored for too much longer, I promise."

* * *

"Are you kidding?! How come you didn't tell us sooner?!" Hilary shrieked, balling her hands in her hair, thus making it stick out at funky angles. 

"I'm sorry, okay? My first priority was going to Kai's aid," Tyson countered, trying to fend off the witch with an excuse.

"There's no reason you couldn't have called us, you know." The Chinese blader fiddled with his long braid, watching Kai intently, although he was basically talking to Tyson. Their team leader hadn't said a word since all of the Bladebreakers (plus Hilary) had arrived at his apartment an hour or so earlier. Tyson had called them, finally, after days of worrying about both of the team members' disappearances, and had given them directions about how to get to the specified building.

Max sat next to Tyson on the couch, and Kai was seated at the very end, beside the world champion. Hilary got to take up residence on the rickety kitchen stool; she caressed Isabella's head, who was sitting on the kitchen counter, as always. (Hilary gave Kai a lecture about how unsanitary it was for a domestic pet to be roaming on surfaces in kitchens, but when he didn't respond, she just sighed heftily and urged Tyson to continue with what had happened up to that point.) Kenny and Rei were both lounging on the floor, as they had nowhere else to sit.

"I know, I know… But things were hectic. How about **you** try tripping over what you think is a **corpse** and **then** try and call your friends!" Tyson rolled his eyes. "I was a bit preoccupied with the blood, and the concussion that Kai received. Plus, there's the fact that Kai's a very secretive person. Do you think he would have let me off the hook with just a couple of bruises if I spilled his beans to you guys? I mean, there was really nothing all of you could have done about it, anyway…"

"Well, you never know! We could have gotten Kenny to start investigating early." Max injected. The arguments continued for a good hour later. The sunlight sneaked across the cramped apartment as time passed.

Everyone piled out of the apartment. Rei, having earned his driver's license, had driven all of the team members to the apartment with the dojo's slightly rusted car. The tiger-like human suggested that they all drive back to the dojo, even if it was just for the time being.

"Kai, it'll be good for you to get out of this stuffy apartment. Trust me, I should know - I've been living with you here for the past few days - and I'm already going stir-crazy!" Tyson concluded, poking the silent teen in the chest, which earned him a "Hn."

Isabella was curled in Rei's cradling arms. Perhaps she was so relaxed because the Chinese beyblader was nearly like a feline himself. They all trudged to the elevator, chattering lightly (with the exception of the taciturn Russian). The group of young adults managed to squish into one elevator, and down they went.

Hilary and Rei were the first to step outside, closely followed by Max and Kenny. The parking lot was mostly full, and consisted of two levels. The driver with the cat led the group in the general direction of the dojo's car, which was parked on the first floor. Tyson jogged slightly to catch up with Max, and tapped his shoulder. The sparkly-eyed blonde stopped and looked at him inquiringly.

"I'll catch up with you guys in a sec, okay? I know where you guys parked, because Rei parked in my reserved spot." Tyson smiled kindly at his good friend, and the blonde smiled back, before jogging to catch up with the others. They were quite far away by now.

Tyson waited for Kai to catch up, and turned to stop him from continuing. He was surprised to find a hand on his shoulder.

"Tyson, look." Kai's voice was hoarse from lack of use. His gaze trailed off into the distance, perhaps to analyze the thick, concrete pillars that supported the upper level of the parking lot, but they would not rest on Tyson's tanned face. "…I owe you for everything you've done. …Thanks."

Kai was slightly surprised when Tyson wound his arms around the other, drawing him close in an appreciative hug. Unsure of what he was doing, the nonchalant young adult coordinated his paler arms to hold on to the other. It was nice, he admitted, but a bit awkward… Somehow, it felt like more than a hug. And he was right.

He glanced into Tyson's incredible, storm-filled eyes for only a split second, and was instantly drawn into them. He cursed himself for falling into the other's devious trap. It went against every rule he had created.

Tyson analyzed Kai's crimson irises, letting his eyelids droop a little. The Russian's face was so perfect… he found himself being drawn inwards like there was some magnetic force at work, tilting his head to the side… He was close enough to just pressing his lips to Kais'…

Oh, but he knew he had made a terrible mistake when a strong set of arms roughly shoved him away like he was repulsive. A shocked expression crossed Tyson's face, as he stared back at his best friend, analyzing him questioningly. Kai seemed… terrified? It was written in his eyes, all over his face, in his body language… Tyson didn't understand. It was a rare sight for their team captain to display any sort of emotion, so this sudden discovery was a bit much for either teenager.

"Kai, I'm so sorry… So sorry I did that… I didn't mean for that to happen..!" Tyson backed away, nearly out of breath, his eyes wide with a new terror that nearly mirrored the Russian's.

"Sorry…" The Japanese world champion whispered, bowed deeply in regret, then pivoted on his foot and bolted away, his hair shadowing his face. Within half a minute, Tyson's retreating form had disappeared amongst all of the other shaded cars.

Kai stood immobile. He was confused, terrified, and upset… But he wasn't angry with Tyson. He was angry with himself.

Just as Kai took a step forward, a hand with a cloth covered his face from behind. He struggled with all of the strength he knew, his terror doubling. He tried to yell for help, to call for Tyson, but the cloth captured most of the sound.

He could not continue trying to escape; his body was becoming weaker, limper; his mind was becoming foggy with unconsciousness.

Knocked out cold for what seemed the umpteenth time, Kai met pavement. His lifeless form was hauled up and carried away.

* * *

YES! DONE! Phew, almost four in the morning… I'm tired. I'm sorry if this chapter wasn't too good, but hopefully, it was! 

I know this chapter is a bit shorter than my other ones. I apologize.

And no, Kai isn't dead. Just thought I'd let you know, to keep the flames at a minimum. ;)

Stay tuned for the next chapter, and _**PLEASE REVIEW!**_

_Phoenix Roar_

_**EDIT:** Heh, apparently the updated version of doesn't like the word "wouldn't"! xD Oh well, it's fixed now. Happy reading!_


	4. Ashes of Redemption

Firstly, let me apologize. I've been so busy with school that I haven't had the time to update (and plus my computer was unusable for a month because of renovations --')! _I'm sorry!!_ Anyways, I think I put the characters _way_ out of character. I'll try and fix that. There's not much I dislike more than OOC characters (well, besides OCs).

**_Secondly, I've decided to bump the rating of this story up to M. I reviewed the rating guide, and there is a ton of swearing in this story, so I figured it's no longer suitable for T. I'm sorry if this stops some of you from reading this._**

Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing. Oh, and if I didn't mention this already – **PLEASE REVIEW!**

**Disclaimer:** Kinomiya Takao (Tyson Granger) and Hiwatari Kai and all likeness of Beyblade is © HUDSON SOFT/TAKARA/HASBRO, BEYBLADE PROJECT, TV TOKYO, Nelvana.

**FOREWARNINGS****:** **Pairing is** **TYKA. Tons of swearing. Mature themes (mostly violence). The Lord's name is taken in vein. **_**YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.**_

**NOTE: Just a heads up - Dizzy isn't exactly the same way she is in the anime. **

* * *

_Just as Kai took a step forward, a hand with a cloth covered his face from behind. He struggled with all of the strength he knew, his terror doubling. He tried to yell for help, but the cloth captured most of the sound. _

_He could not continue trying to escape; his body was becoming weaker, limper; his mind was becoming foggy with unconsciousness._

_Knocked out cold for what seemed the umpteenth time, Kai met pavement. His lifeless form was hauled up and carried away._

_How to survive without a Heart_

_Chapter IV_

_Ashes of Redemption_

* * *

'Oh God.'

Tyson's feet pounded the concrete floor of the parking lot, trying to distance himself from the disastrous scene that had just occurred. His breathing came in sharp packets as he neared a bend and ran down a narrow alley, which was created by a variety of immobile vehicles. He came to slow down in front of a particularly rusty car.

A strong arm peeled back the groaning door with a bit more force than was necessary, and metallic clangs resounded from its innards that kept it from flying off completely. The car jostled slightly as Tyson threw himself in like a garbage bag to a garbage truck. The door slammed shut, carrying with it the last remaining protests of metal-against-metal.

Rei's nimble fingers were kneading Isabella's head, who was purring contentedly, still cradled in his arms. Hilary, who had called shotgun, was talking to the Chinaman animatedly about hair conditioners; what was the best technique, for how long to keep the foam in, split-ends and how to avoid them, and the like.

Max was resting his freckled cheek in his gloved palm, azure eyes watching the Chief work on his laptop with an interested expression. Kenny let out a small whine when Tyson jumped in the car; sitting in the middle of the back row was _not_ fun when sandwiched in between two nearly full-grown males.

Tyson's somewhat dramatic entrance and silent demeanor didn't seem odd to any of the team, and they carried on.

"Kenny, _why_ are you watching an _action movie_ on YooTube?1 You like the ones with rainbows and butterflies!" Max inquired with a sunny eyebrow raised and a quirked mouth, turning his attention from the screen to his younger friend, who had jumped at the question. Evidently, the Chief hadn't known Max was watching over his shoulder, and slammed the laptop shut. The nerdy boy's face flushed various shades of pink and red, and if examined closely, even purple could be seen.

He choked for a second before correcting his crooked posture, as if that would give him any more authority over the taller, older blonde.

"So? W-what's it to _you_ what I watch?" he said with a matter-of-fact voice, crossing his arms. Max let out a small, amused laugh.

"You hate violence and blood, Kenny."

Kenny huffed and twisted in his seat, turning his back towards Max. "Hey, Tyson." He greeted in an unnaturally grumpy voice. Max, who was still grinning like a Cheshire cat, straightened up to see over Kenny's head. "Hiya, Ty!"

Tyson nodded in acknowledgement, glancing in their general directions, but not connecting with their eyes. If he did, they would have been able to see his sadness.

Hilary turned around, grasping the headrest between her pale hands.

"Where's Kai?" she asked with her nasally voice, blinking curiously at Tyson with her big, owlish eyes.

"Uh, he was right behind me last time I checked." Tyson muttered, glancing out of the dirty car window. Strangely, there was no sign of the captain anywhere.

"Maybe he realized he had to take a piss and went back to relieve himself, so we should wait for him," said Max enthusiastically, causing Rei to twitch in response.

"Don't use that kind of language around girls, Maxie."

"I'm a _woman, _thank you very much!"

"…Psh, a _woman_? Make sure you double-check that, Hils." Tyson said with a small smirk. 'I've got to keep up appearances, or they're going to be curious… and that's the thing I want least. Nobody needs to know what happened between Kai and me.'

"Excuse me?!" Hilary reached back, trying to grab at Tyson's neck. He skillfully maneuvered out of her reach, teeth glinting deviously behind his grin. Despite not being able to clasp the windpipes of the World Champion, his seatbelt was in her reach, and she pulled it. The belt around his waist reacted, squeezing around his lower midsection (almost the family jewels, if you know what I mean). His eyes widened significantly, and with a "you bitch", he smacked her hand away. She grinned, her face smug with victory as she turned back into a proper position.

Five minutes passed, filled with the Beybladers' usual antics. Kenny continued to watch his action movie, Max was furtively looking over the nerd's shoulder, and Hilary and Rei went right back into their conversation about conditioners.

Another ten minutes, and still nothing happened. "I'll go look for him," Tyson said, opening the door and exiting the vehicle without waiting for their consent. "Be right back."

He jogged towards the building. As he approached it, he became worried. Nobody was loitering along the sidewalk. He took caution to run all the way around the building, just to check and make sure that the leader wasn't playing hide-and-seek, but there was still no sign of him.

'Maybe he went back up… maybe he was embarrassed after what I did and didn't want anything else to do with us,' Tyson thought as he walked through the doors, lightly catching his breath. He began to punch Kai's apartment code into the apartment call-up machine. 'Or maybe, as Max put it, _he had to take a piss_!'

That thought became a hope as Kai refused to answer the call. Tyson ground his teeth in both anxiety and annoyance. 'He's not picking up because he's pissed with me.' He flipped open his cell phone and dialed Kai's number. One ring… Two rings… Five rings… Seven rings… The ominous beep to the answering machine. Tyson sighed as the automated voice listed instructions to him, and then began to talk softly after it sounded.

"Kai, I'm really, really sorry about what happened… What I tried to do... Could you please pick up so we can talk, or at least come back down so we can leave? We're waiting for you. And, um, you know, you're not really safe here anymore, and yeah, um, I know you don't want to hear _that_ from _me_ right now, but, please… if not for my sake, for _your_ sake. Please come with us. I'm waiting in the lobby. Call me back as soon as you can, k? I…" His jaw went slack as if to continue on a forbidden thought, but snapped out of it after a moment and closed his sleek mobile. He put it back in his pocket after making sure it was on vibrate.

Several more minutes passed, but nothing changed. Tyson stopped tapping his foot in anticipation and rapped on the glass of the locked door. The chubby security guard seated not too far away raised a thick, graying eyebrow, and waddled his way towards the anxious teenager.

He unlocked the door and opened it a crack, leaning protectively to block Tyson from rushing past.

"Whadda y'want, punk?"

'Man, could this geezer be any grumpier?' "Did you see Kai Hiwatari walk back in recently, by any chance? Tall guy, a bit older than me, walks around like he got something stuck up his ass?"

The guard screwed up his coarse face in thought. "Oh, _that_ guy -- y'mean them famous kid with that there weird hair-doo that juss' moved in'ere?"

"Yeah, him."

"Nah, last I saws'im, he were leavin' witchoo."

"Oh… Okay, th-" The guard shut the door promptly and slowly began to roll his way back to his desk.

Tyson's heart began to speed up. If Kai wasn't outside, and if he wasn't in his apartment, where _was_ he?

He opened the outside doors and began to sprint along the sidewalk where he had checked before. "Kai… Kai!" Tyson shouted, his breathing speeding up.

The sound of a car pulling up beside him made him jump. He pivoted around to see Hilary clamber out of the vehicle.

"What's the matter?" She asked, approaching him. "Isn't he taking a _wiz_?"

"No… he's not here, he's not there, he's not anywhere!" Tyson buried his head in his hands. "I don't know where he went." Hilary placed a warm hand on his shoulder, as if it would comfort him. "I'm sure he's fine, Tyson. You're overreacting," she said, bending slightly to see Tyson's hidden face.

Tyson had a horrible gut feeling she was wrong.

* * *

The black fog began to recede, and Kai's head was pounding. He dazedly stared at the gray roof of a car as his consciousness crept back to him. A familiar voice was talking in the background to someone else.

Kai shifted his crimson eyes to the side, looking at the backs of the car seats that loomed over him.

"Finally awake, boy?"

The voice nearly sent shivers up his spine, but he forced himself to lie still.

A familiar, jaggedly bulky face was peering over the seat at him.

Realization flooded over the hazy captain; memories began to fill his head. His friends. Tyson. How close he had come to… No, he wouldn't think of it. And now he was lying awkwardly on his back, his hands bound behind him, his feet tied together. He tried to pull his limbs apart, but it was no use. He felt the fabrics that imprisoned him. Their cold surfaces bit into his wrists.

"We know how good you are at untying ropes. You may be extraordinary, but you're still human. You can't break through metal chains." Boris said, glaring down at him with his brown, bloodshot eyes. Kai didn't want to look up into them; he couldn't. He rested his head against the floor and tilted it as if to look at Boris' ugly boots.

"Finally got smart." Kai replied monotonously, a cold smirk spreading across his dry lips. His crimson eyes were metallic, staring at a fixed spot on the floor. Strands of his silvery gray hair fluttered in the wind of his breath.

Minutes passed in silence.

Kai heard a familiar ring tone go off, and to his surprise and dislike, Boris pulled his very cell phone from his trench coat pocket. "Hmm, I wonder who could be trying to call you?" Boris said playfully, flipping open the device. He pressed a couple of buttons, and frowned.

"Think you're so smart by putting a password on this? Boy, y'better tell me the code before something bad happens to you."

Kai kept his mouth firmly shut.

"You asked for it, punk."

Boris reached back.

The dirty, chunky hand was coming at him. Kai glared and bit at it viciously with his teeth. Boris' fast reflexes saved his hand from having missing pieces; a loud clack came from Kai's jaws, which snapped together like an alligator's.

"Y'little bugger," Boris ground out, quickly grabbing a clump of Kai's hair and dragging him so that his face was closer to his own.

Kai's eyes burned with a hate so strong, that Boris was slightly taken aback.

"I'm glad to see that the old you still exists." Boris' cracked lips creaked into a sadistic smile. "We won't have to dig too deep to free him of his flesh prison."

"Fuck you."

Spit dribbled down between Boris' eyes. The peaks of muscle in the older man's face contracted sharply, and his purplish lips peeled back to reveal barred, yellowing teeth.

"D'you have a death wish? You think you're powerful now that you're older, boy? Let me remind you about who's in charge."

Boris pulled hard on his hair and twisted; he began to dig his nails into skin. Kai's face hardened with pain, but he refused to let it be known verbally.

Boris began to growl; Kai knew it was one of the signs that Boris was getting angry.

"Give me your fucking password!"

* * *

Kai panted as he hit the side of the truck again, pain shooting through his skull. Blood dribbled into his eyes from what he assumed to be a large gash on his forehead. Apparently, Boris was in one of his better moods; he had given Kai a beating for not giving him the password to his cell phone's answering machine. He could taste a bittersweet, metallic taste on his tongue. The muscle flicked out to touch a bleeding wound on his lower lip. The substance flowed down and pooled around his gums, coating his teeth. He withdrew his tongue and closed his lips again.

'Why would he care about what people message me about?' Kai thought. The car lurched around another sharp bend, sending Kai to tumble across the vehicle again. His right temple met with the opposite side, and he closed his eyes tightly in order to try and lessen the pain.

'He might be trying to find something to use against me. It would be typical of him.' Kai furrowed his brow, only to realize the one thing that had been buried in the back of his mind all along.

'**Shit.'**

'Tyson, why did you have to show affection for me?' The Russian's anxiety grew twofold. 'You better not have left a message on my cell phone; worse, a _mushy_ message. If Boris finds that, we're _both_ dead meat.'

'It's only a matter of time until he cracks my password. And when he does, I will cease to exist in this world.'

* * *

"Tyson, stop pacing around! Now you're making _me_ worry!" cried Hilary, crossing her arms in a motherly fashion.

The World Champion had been pacing the dojo's sleek wooden floors, his socked feet hardly making a sound. "Sorry," he apologized, ungracefully plopping himself on the floor amongst the other sitting Bladebreakers.

"Stop fiddling with the hem of your shirt!"

"Sorry."

Silence.

"_Jesus!_ Stop fiddling with your hair!"

"Sorry." Tyson heaved a heavy sigh.

"Tyson, why are you so worried? I'm sure he's fine." Kenny pushed his glasses further up his nose in order to see the (action) movie playing on his laptop better. "I already tried to research with the help of Dizzy, but I couldn't locate him without Dranzer's aura. Despite how powerful Dizzy is, even if he did have Dranzer, he would be out of reach. And we haven't resorted to using tracking devices yet, although I'm starting to think we should..!"

"Chief, you are _such_ a nerd for naming your computer," said Max, ruffling the younger one's hair, who was sitting beside him again.

"Quit it! And it is _NOT_ nerdy! Besides, she's unlike any other computer program I have. I didn't even download her or anything; she appeared on my laptop after a power surge!"

"Yeah, sure, buddy. It's still creepy."

"But she talks to me sometimes!!"

"Uh huh."

"I'm serious!"

"Can we get back on topic, please?" Rei looked slightly annoyed while playing with his long braid. "This obviously means a lot to Tyson, so we should take this seriously."

"Yeah, Tyson obviously _cares a whole lot_," said Hilary playfully, winking at her friend.

Tyson shot her a confused look. "Yeah, why wouldn't I? He's in our team, never mind our _captain_, and he's our friend. He hasn't called in the past seven hours, so of course I'm worried!"

"Oh, I don't know, you just seem a tad bit… _over-reactive_… when it comes to Kai," said Max, looking at his friend with smiling blue eyes.

"So? Is there something you'd like to share?" Hilary inched over to sit close to Tyson and poked his side with her elbow. "Well? Spill it! I can see the juicy blackmail-worthy material sloshing around in that empty skull of yours!" Max was, by now, on Tyson's other side, mimicking Hilary.

"There isn't anything!" Tyson exclaimed, puffing his cheeks out in an innocent but annoyed manner and holding up his hands as if to show he literally had nothing. "Lemme be! You're bullying me!" (Heheh, "booleeing"... Don't ask, inside joke.)

"Guys, stop teasing him," Rei commanded, getting up as if to shoo Hilary and Max away from Tyson's side. "You guys remind me of vultures, picking on the unfortunate!" He placed his hands on his hips in an authoritative manner until his two friends had stopped bullying the poor beyblader, and then sat back down.

"So you're sure he was right behind you?" Rei asked.

"Yeah," Tyson replied, staring past the Chinaman's head. Isabella prowled into the room and brushed up against the fretting teenager. He absentmindedly began to scratch her head, his fingers making tiny circles in the snow-white fur.

"Why didn't he follow?"

"Uh," Tyson looked at Isabella. Isabella looked at Tyson. She seemed to be thinking, 'Don't ask _me._ I'm not going to lie for you.' The cat left his side and continued on her meandering quest. "I thought he was right behind me, but when I reached the car, I realized he wasn't there." Hey, it wasn't exactly a lie; it was true. He just hadn't given out details.

There didn't seem to be anything left to say. Tyson brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, resting his cheek against one knee. He let his eyes slide closed. Kenny was currently watching a violent scene in his movie; gunshots and yelling came from the laptop's tiny speakers. Isabella was purring loudly, who was being groomed by Max's fingers. The buzz from the television left on only for background noise was quiet, the words of the news report blending together unless the viewer actually concentrated on what was being said. A woman's serious, depressing voice spoke.

"…_Please participate in the aid of the crisis by donating to the Survival Charity Fund. The death toll is now past 10 000. These unfortunate victims are in need of our help. Please call (6598)-2039-40394 to get more information about the Survival Charity Fund._

_In more local news, yet another murder scene has been discovered in Bay City…"_

"Just what this city _needs_," sighed Hilary, shaking her head. Apparently, the others had started listening to the television too.

"…_After hours of experiments and analyses, the body was given an identity. The victim was none other than Kai Hiwatari, the captain of the Bladebreakers-_"

"What?!" cried Tyson, popping up like popcorn. He ran to the monitor and brought his face so close to it that he could practically see the individual pixels. His eyes were wide, his face pale. His hands gripped the screen's edges. The others shot up and clumped around him. Isabella walked around them, mewling, confused with the newfound intense atmosphere.

"…_that Tyson Kinomiya was looking for him._"

The scene switched from the newsroom to an interview previously recorded with an extremely fat, balding, graying, sweaty security guard. Tyson recognized him.

"'_Yep, yep, it sure wuzz'im, that there young'un,' said fatty, taping a computer monitor that conveniently displayed Tyson's latest paparazzi photo. It was taken from a car when he was rushing to Kai's apartment for the first time, only about a week ago._

'_How do you know this?' asked the reporter, pointing the microphone at the guard again._

'_He knocked on the door and looked all like he had ter ask somethin' important,' said the fat man, 'he asked me if I seen some punk, an' then he described'im, and I said no, last time I saws the kid, he was wit that Typhoon… or somethin'. An' den 'e left, all in a rush after I closed the door 'gain. Dat's the last thin' I saws.' _

'_So this picture was taken in approximately the same area as the murder, is that correct?' _

'_Yes ma'am.'_

'_Then he's been there before? Perhaps with Kai, who has apparently moved in to that building?'_

'_Well, emmm…' He scratched the bald patch on his head. _'_I-I suppose so, but I dun remember really seein' the punk enter th' building… kind of… er…' He looked nervously at the camera, probably praying that his boss wasn't watching. He pulled a polka-dotted handkerchief from his pocket and began to dab at the droplets of sweat running down his saggy, creased face._

'_Do you have any video footage of the murder scene, as it took place outside the building?'_

'_N-no, ma'am, I don't. The police already came n' talked ter me 'bout dis whole mess, an' we looked fer th' tapes, bu' they went missin'! I swears, I swears ter __**God**__ dat I didn' lose nuthin', I swear on me mum's grave!' _He sounded like he was begging for forgiveness in order to not lose his job. The handkerchief was damp with sweat, but the man refused to stop blotting his face with it. _'Bu' nobody found nuthin'. It's like someone broke in n' stole all o' it!'_

'_How intriguing. You did say that you hadn't seen Tyson enter the building before, so do you think it's possible that the thief of the footage is Mr. Kinomiya?'_

'_I-I don't know! I thought I wus just 'ere to give informations, not opinyuns-!'_

The clip ended.

"_The investigations will continue. If you know anything about the murder, please go to the website or call the number listed at the bottom of the screen. Any extra information would greatly help the homicide division. All comments are kept confidential._"

It was as if the reporter had stopped talking, even though her heavily lipsticked mouth was still moving. The silence in the room was heavy. So was Tyson's body.

He felt as if he were on top of a mountain. The air was thin. He couldn't breathe. The others had started to murmur - or were they?

His hands slid off of the television. His knees hit the floor.

* * *

Kai's eyes snapped open in response to the first sound he'd heard in hours. His head still ached. His injuries from being ambushed only a week or so ago were only partly healed, and what was worse was that Boris had reopened some of the ones on his head with the beating he took from him in the vehicle.

Footsteps clacked on the ancient stone floors. "So," said a voice that Kai detested with his entire being, "it looks as though freedom has changed you too much for your grandfather's liking."

His ugly Russian captivator stared down at him through the thick bars, invisible to Kai.

The shadowy figure began to slowly prowl around the square cage. A single, weak light bulb hung from the ceiling above Kai, hardly illuminating the prison area. But it was enough to keep everything else beyond the bars in the dark. It was a scary perspective, as the only thing he could rely on to tell him where his captor was, was now sound. Kai forced himself to sit up. His posture was slumped, his head lowered so that his chin was nearly touching his chest. His eyelids were only so open as to reveal slits of crimson, which stared at the grimy floor with hate.

Five footsteps, a rustle of clothing, three beeps.

"_Please enter your password."_

'No!' Kai's eyes widened significantly, his muscles froze. Was this actually _fear_ he felt?

"8 – T," _beep._

"9 – Y," _beep._

"7 – S," _beep._

"6 – O," _beep._

"6 – N," _beep_.

"5 – K," _beep._

"4 – I," _beep._

"6 – N," _beep._

"6 – O," _beep_.

"6 – M," _beep._

"4 – I," _beep._

"9 – Y," _beep._

"2 – A," _beep._

"Quite the obvious password, now that I think about it," the shadow sneered, "why don't we listen to your messages? Or should I say, _message_?"

'…He's just fucking with my mind…'

"_Kai, I'm really, really sorry about what happened… What I tried to do... Could you please pick up so we can talk, or at least come back down so we can leave? We're waiting for you. And, um, you know, you're not really safe here anymore, and yeah, um, I know you don't want to hear that from __**me**__ right now, but, please… if not for__** my**__ sake, for __**your**__ sake. Please come with us. I'm waiting in the lobby. Call me back as soon as you can, k? I…"_

Static interrupted Tyson's silence, as if he was at a loss of what to say, and he hung up.

"_End of messages._"

There was a clack as Boris closed the phone, then a rustle as he put it back in his pocket.

"Your grandfather is extremely disappointed. He has some very _select_ words for you, but I think it would hurt more to hear them from him yourself."

"It's just a message. It means nothing."

"Oh, right. I forgot to mention that I listened to the ones he sent you before that." The footsteps seemed to come closer to the perimeter of the cage, causing a shiver to run up Kai's spine. "Interesting how you've kept every single recent voicemail _he's _sent you."

Kai was frozen to the floor, a statue. The footsteps eased up, and even though Kai strained to hear them, he couldn't.

"He's your lover," the voice came from behind him. It startled him, making his head jerk up. His eyes scanned the darkness, but it was impossible to see, no matter how hard he concentrated.

"No."

"You've lived together."

"Only because there was nowhere else for me to go."

"That's why he cared so much as to hunt your new place down and take care of you for a full week, after we stole Dranzer?" The voice was getting closer.

"Dranzer's here?" Kai stood up, walking to the edge of the cage as if it would help him see his beloved phoenix. He grabbed the bars with both hands, gritting his teeth. "Bastard!"

"Tsk, tsk. Such language..." Kai's senses tingled as if to warn him about something, but he didn't know what they were reacting to until, "…we should cut your tongue out for that. I'm sure your grandfather wouldn't' mind," he felt a coarse palm feather across his right jaw, cheek, lower lip. He jumped back, eyes wide. Subtle shivers ran across his body as he fell backwards. He scrambled to the middle of the cage, trying to get away from all sides.

Kai tried to compose himself, but his voice still shook. "D-don't **ever** touch me again."

Boris let out a low chuckle. "Oh, so that really bothers you, does it? I'll keep that in mind."

The door opened, slightly illuminating the entire room. The dark outline of Boris stood pressed against the cage, blocking Kai's view of the newcomer, the arm he had put through still resting there. As the door closed, the light faded away, and Boris smirked at the clearer sight of Kai's expression. "My, my, you _do _look _frightened_."

"That's enough." The voice of the second man made Kai's shivering slip from what little control he had over it. "You are welcome to continue after I am finished with him. If he's still alive by then."

"Yes, sir." There was a shuffle of feet as the men moved locations.

"Hmm… He does seem more scared than usual. A new tactic, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good work, Boris."

"Thank you, sir."

"Kai." The word was sharp, intended to slice through the receiver. The sixteen-year-old tried to harden his exterior to avoid being hurt. He knew what a mind-manipulating bastard Voltaire could be.

"I had some insignificant hope that we would be able to knock some sense into you." Kai's head lowered again, staring grimly at the floor.

"We might still have that chance," continued Voltaire, "but now, I don't want _filth_ to work for me. I don't want _filth_ in my family."

Kai did not respond.

"I thought I brought you up well. I trained you, I fed you, I put a roof over your head. I drilled the emotion out of you. I taught you that emotions only hurt you in the end. And that's what they did, didn't they? Look where you are now.

"You became friends, best friends, with _Tyson_. And now I know it was something more. We stole the tapes from your apartment building. We saw what he did. He tried to kiss you, and look where it landed you. If he hadn't tried anything, you would be with him, probably sharing a… _romance_.

"That… _Tyson_," Kai heard Voltaire spit venomously, "He's your lover. I was utterly _disgusted_ to be related to you."

"…Was," Kai repeated emotionlessly.

"As of one hour ago," the old man continued, hissing, "You have been officially disowned."

Something cylindrical was shoved through a square space between the bars and pushed towards his direction.

A bottle full of rattling contents slowed and bumped into his left leg.

"The only way you can gain any sort of respect back from me is to kill yourself. In front of me. Now."

Something inside of Kai snapped as he stared at the label of the drug bottle.

"Go on, Kai. Don't you want your last remaining family member to think of you as something with value?" His voice dripped with sarcasm.

Once upon a time, a six-year-old Kai looked up to his grandfather. As he grew older, treated like the scum on the bottom of a shoe, he began to realize just how wrong he was. But he was the only family he had. That's why he stuck with him for so long. He had hardly known his parents, and he clung to Voltaire as a last lifeline. Now he was cut free of him, his last safety net.

He was falling with no net to catch him.

Tyson… Tyson had helped Kai see just how rotten Voltaire really was. Tyson had pointed out that Voltaire was not a safety net whatsoever… he was the abyss that lay below the safety zone.

The Bladebreakers were his safety net. Dranzer was his safety net. Tyson was his safety net.

Kai picked up the bottle, holding it tightly in his grasp. He began to unscrew the lid.

"Do it… and be a part of our family once more," Voltaire muttered, edging him on. "Your parents are waiting."

But Kai stopped when it was nearly off.

"Grandfather," he spoke with a raspy, metallic voice, "or should I say… _Voltaire._" He reeled his arm back and flung the bottle with all his strength at the side of the cage from where the bottle came. It hit with a loud bang, the cap flew off, the pills exploded, raining down on the floor on either side of the cage wall.

"I don't need your _worthless_ opinion. You can go and have your little _Hiwatari _clan. I couldn't give a _shit _about you anymore."

There was silence. Kai knew he had effectively pissed Voltaire off, far beyond anything he'd ever attempted before.

"You son of a _bitch_," Voltaire hissed, each word squeezing through his aging teeth at a slow pace. Kai could practically hear his blood pressure shoot up. The veins were probably popping out of his baggy skin already.

"I will make him pay, sir."

"That you will, but let him hear this first." Voltaire smirked through his rage. "I have workers stationed _everywhere_. They put together a murder scene. And the murdered victim was you."

Kai's eyes widened.

"It just so happened that Tyson was the last person who was with you. Fake evidence was placed on a corpse and deposited at the scene. My insiders at the police station did some … _tinkering_… and in about, oh, half an hour? Tyson is going to be receiving a visit from them."

Kai's heart sped up.

"They are going to offer him something that will decide the fate of his future, our future, and _yours._ Shall I tell you what they intend to do?"

* * *

A moan escaped his lips as his eyes fluttered open. He felt heavy, unable to move anything.

All of the Bladebreakers were in his room.

"Oh, look! He's awake." Max rushed to his side. "How you doin', buddy?"

"You fainted," Hilary said, leaning over him, "are you feeling better?" She had tear streaks on her face.

Tyson could hardly remember anything. Where was he? What happened? The news…

Slowly, the world champion tried to sit up, but was pushed back down by Max.

"You need to relax. You got pretty scared back there, gave us a good scare too… I-it's a lot of information to take in at once…"

"K…" Tyson tried to speak, finding himself repeating the same consonant over and over again. "K… K…"

The doorbell rang.

"I'll get it." Rei murmured, leaving the room without another word.

The atmosphere was heavy in the room. Hilary had been crying, and the rest of them looked on the edge of tears. Except Rei. He probably felt that he had to be the strong one in place of Kai. Somebody had to be the pillar to hold up the collapsing building.

"It's okay, Tyson." Hilary said, her eyes watering, brushing some of his bangs away from his face with her fingertips in a motherly fashion. "Do you want me to get you something to drink? Eat?"

"K…" Tyson felt his eyes water. "Kai's… de…" His voice faded out near the end, unable to be used so early after waking up.

Tears leaked from her eyes, dribbling down her face. Kenny sniffled, and brushed aside his own brown bangs in order to wipe away the tears that had formed there with his sleeve. His computer, for once, was not plastered to his lap. It was odd seeing the nerd as a human being, without mechanical parts attached.

"We know, Tyson," said Max, his voice quivering, "It's hard to believe…"

Not a sound was uttered, as each individual sat in their own mourning thoughts.

Finally, the news began to sink in.

"No…" Tyson whispered. "No… No… No… No…" Tears rolled from the corners of his stormy eyes. He closed his eyelids, his eyebrows contracting, his lips pressing together tightly. He inhaled a shuddering breath, his chest heavy with the weight of death. Max scooped him into a hug, and the two mourned in silence, Tyson hanging on for dear life. Although he knew not the value of it anymore.

Rei came back in. "Guys, clear out. Some police officers want to talk to you alone, Tyson. I tried to tell them that you weren't feeling up to it, but they started using some fancy legal mumbo jumbo, and I had no choice…"

"It's okay…" Tyson removed himself from Max and wiped at his eyes with his arm.

A policeman and a policewoman came storming into the room, hands on their guns, looking très professional. "Good luck, man." Max put his pale hand on Tyson's shoulder, before scurrying after the others and closing the door behind him.

Tyson swung his legs slowly off the side of the bed, and pushed himself up. The officers were standing not too far away from him.

"You know what we're here to discuss, Mr. Kinomiya."

"I know," the teenager said, rubbing at his left eye with a hand. "I swear, I didn't do anything…"

"We know you didn't," said the female. Both officers took out their guns and pointed it at Tyson.

"Wh…" His eyes grew wide.

"We have an offer to propose," the male said. "Either you admit – on live television - that you killed Mr. Hiwatari, and we take you to him, or you keep your reputation innocent, and we really **will** kill him. You will be framed, and put in jail for life."

Tyson's jaw opened and closed in shock, making random sounds. He composed himself.

"W-wait… You're telling me he's _alive_?! What kind of police officers are you?!"

"He is alive. For the time being. It all depends on you," said the female.

"Voltaire has found out about your… _relationship_ with him, and is not happy. He won't hesitate to kill him in the worst way possible," said the male.

"It's that GODDAMN _Voltaire_!" Tyson clenched his jaws and fists, standing up fast. He ignored the dizzy rush that hit him full-on. The 'police officers' cocked their guns in alarm. They were ready to shoot him if he tried anything. Rage emitted from Tyson's stormy eyes.

"You better not have even _touched_ a hair on his head, or I swear to God, there'll be _hell_ to pay! Where's the camera?! I'll do your fucking broadcast _right now_."

* * *

Kai ran at the wall, throwing caution to the wind. He shoved an arm through one of the square holes that the crisscrossing bars made, swiping through the darkness wildly, trying to find the throat of the old man that was once his grandfather.

"You bastard!" Kai cried, finding his target, pressing. "You'd better not do anything to him!"

Voltaire had tried to move back, but hadn't been fast enough.

A filthy hand grabbed Kai's pale wrist, squeezing it with immense strength. Kai cried out, being forced to let go of the old man. Wheezing and coughing ensued.

"Are you alright, Mr. Voltaire?" Boris said, closing something metallic around Kai's wrist. Without thinking, Kai brought his other hand close to the bars, trying to pry it off of him. It glinted in the extremely dull light, telling him that it was a handcuff.

A hand that had become identifiable by its filthiness grabbed Kai's, pulling it through the other hole. The other side of the handcuff was forced around it. He was rendered immobile, despite his struggling.

The choking stopped gradually. "You little punk, I should kill you myself for that," spoke Voltaire, rasping. "However, I must thank you for reacting so … _vividly._ I am now certain that you love him."

Kai growled, panting with the adrenaline and rage that coursed through his system.

"I DON'T LOVE HIM!"

"You do. You just proved it." Voltaire smirked snidely. "Nothing else except Dranzer has ever gotten such a rise out of you. Thank you for this vital piece of information."

Kai yelled out in frustration like a captured beast, pulling as hard as he could against the bars. The handcuffs' metallic edges cut into his wrists. He watched a slightly brighter light flood into the room from around the silhouette of the man he hated as he opened the door. Kai turned his head, left temple against the cold, rusty bars, catching a glimpse of Boris unlocking the cell door.

There were two creaks.

One from the door sealing Voltaire out, one from the door sealing Boris in.

* * *

Bah, I'm so evil…

Anyway, I'm glad I got this out of the way. I have my first two exams in two days from now (well technically "tomorrow" since it's technically Monday at the moment…) and I need to go study. I couldn't concentrate though, because I was itching to get this done.

I hope you all liked it, and again, I'm sorry for the delay. Summer's coming up, so hopefully I'll be able to update soon.

Please, _please _REVIEW! I'll be encouraged to update faster if I get lots! :)

_Phoenix Roar_

1 And yes, I spelt Yootube wrong on purpose. I don't want to get sued. The less I have to mention real trademarked things, the better. 3


	5. Merciless

* * *

And yes, I have changed the title from

_How to Survive Without a Heart__ to __Merciless__._ Many, many thanks to one of my very best friends (who I badgered into signing up for this site as **Boadiccea**) for sitting with me for many hours and forcing me to think up new stuff for this story (including the new title and summary)! A lot of this has spawned from her great wisdom and new ideas. Again, thank you, Boadicceaaaa :D Your encouragement is always welcome, and always has been since the very beginning of Merciless! Without you, this story probably wouldn't have gotten past the first chapter.

Thank you for reading – but if you are reading and not leaving a review, _**SSSHTOPPIT!**_ Just click the review button, please? :(

**Disclaimer:** Kinomiya Takao (Tyson Granger) and Hiwatari Kai and all likeness of Beyblade is © HUDSON SOFT/TAKARA/HASBRO, BEYBLADE PROJECT, TV TOKYO, Nelvana.

**FOREWARNINGS:**** TYKA (duh). Overdose of swearing (duh). **_**Mature themes, mentions of rape, violence.**_** Not for the young (hence the rating of **_**M**_**)! **_**YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Don't blame me for any scarring! It's YOUR choice to read this!**_

* * *

_Kai yelled out in frustration like a captured beast, pulling as hard as he could against the bars. The handcuffs' metallic edges cut into his wrists. He watched a slightly brighter light flood into the room from around the silhouette of the man he hated as he opened the door. Kai turned his head, left temple against the cold, rusty bars, catching a glimpse of Boris unlocking the cell door. _

_There were two creaks._

_One from the door sealing Voltaire out, one from the door sealing Boris in._

* * *

_Merciless_

_Chapter V_

_Merciless_

"Just like old times, isn't it, Kai?" Kai shuddered, inhaling shakily as cold breath from behind him ghosted over the back of his sweat-and-blood-slicked neck and jaw.

A tongue flicked out to lick a drop of blood from his shoulder. Kai wasn't sure if the rattling from the handcuffs was caused by some passing wind, or rather his very own shivering. "I'm glad you're back. I've missed you _so_."

The slimy muscle made a longer route this time, leaving an invisible track behind it like a snail. It meandered up the back of Kai's neck, abruptly stopping a couple centimeters from the dark blue hairline. Kai stared into the darkness pass the bars, eyes unblinking, form shaking uncontrollably. He was unaware of the panicked pants escaping from between his whitened, bloody lips.

"I would love to continue our little _drama_," his deep, manipulative voice murmured directly into Kai's ear, "but I'm afraid my break time is over. I have more… _pressing_," Kai wanted to vomit as he felt Boris press against his back again, "matters to attend to. I must go talk to Tyson, you see."

The weight forcing him against the wall removed itself slowly. The handcuffs chinked against the metal bars as Kai slightly collapsed, half relying on the captive devices to keep him conscious and upright.

"You…" Kai whispered with a hoarse voice he didn't know he owned.

The metal gate to the cell opened and closed again, more metallic chains rattling.

"You…"

Footsteps telling Kai that Boris was prowling around the cage in the shadows.

"You…"

"Spit it out. I don't have _all __**day**_." The voice echoed from somewhere, but Kai was too delirious to comprehend the direction.

"If you… touch him…" Kai panted, irises expanding and contracting as his vision slipped in and out – or was it pure madness? "I… I'll…"

"You'll _what_?" The voice was louder. Boris was hovering right next to Kai's chained hands, mocking him right in his own face. "Cry," his breath was rancid, "the next time I_ fuck _ya?"

'No.' Kai's mouth refused to listen to him anymore, refused to make any more sound; but the thought burned vividly behind his crimson eyes.

Boris laughed, reaching in to grab a handful of Kai's hair. He yanked the younger male's head up again to get a better glimpse at the traumatized face that stared off into nothingness – damage assessment.

'But I…'

The hand quickly withdrew, clearly well educated from its last close encounter with Kai's teeth.

'…I swear…'

The door closed, leaving Kai in almost total darkness.

'I will **KILL** you.'

* * *

The room was an office. Wooden, shining as if it was just cleaned with wax an hour before his arrival.

"You will go to jail first," the purple-haired, older man spoke, "and we will break you out after enough time has passed. We don't want the public suspicious."

Tyson banged his fist on the table, causing the body guards stationed in the corners of the room to circle in closer and cock their guns.

"I thought you said you would take me to Kai!" the World Champion shouted, a vein pulsing in his temple. "I _did_ your broadcast! I _agreed _to come with you, I _did_ come with you! Here _I_ am! Where is _he_?!"

"Patience, young Beyblader."

"No, I will NOT have patience you son-of-a"

"They could shoot you dead right now, as soon as I give the word."

"Would it let me see him if they _did_?"

"What do you mean?"

"Did you… _kill_ him?"

"No, not yet. Although I'm starting to wonder how long he's going to survive."

"What exactly have you been _doing_ to him?!"

"You'll see for yourself. The sooner you hold your trial and go to jail, the bigger the chance he has of surviving." Boris let out a twisted smile – his attempt at sweet was like a candy apple gone horribly rotten.

Tyson's fist shook with the pressure he exerted on his own fingers. He could hardly keep himself from running over and beating the man across the table. But he remembered that getting shot in the process would mean death, and that would spell out death for Kai.

He couldn't have that.

"Give me the earliest you can give me. Everyone around the world already thinks I murdered him."

"Tomorrow, then."

"Wha- doesn't it take_ months_ for the federal-"

"We pre-booked one. If you had declined our offer, we would have killed him tomorrow."

Tyson felt a shiver go up his spine.

'They plotted this so long ago. The Bladebreakers… _Kai_ was in so much danger for this long...?'

* * *

The room was decorated in the same fashion as the office Tyson was in yesterday. Gods, he was sick of these official-looking rooms. He felt trapped, like the only real human in the entire place, despite all of the other bodies surrounding him.

"Tyson Kinomiya," said a darker-skinned woman sitting at a high podium, face stiff as stone, "how do you plead?"

The shuffling of shoes and clothes, the sounds of breathing, they all seemed to fade away in order to hear Tyson's response loud and clear.

"Guilty."

* * *

Stormy eyes shifted nervously from side to side, trying to see 360 degrees at once. He felt so insecure, so unsafe here… but he knew you weren't supposed to feel safe in a prison. He would have laughed at the words 'safe' and 'prison' being in the same sentence if he wasn't on the edge of a mental breakdown.

Tyson thought his heart was gonna pop out of his chest, it was hammering so hard. Either that or he was gonna puke it up with the fear in the pit of his stomach.

How could this have happened to him?

Once he was a happy-go-lucky kid that beybladed for fun. And now here he was, walking straight into a jail that he could possibly be trapped in for the rest of his life for a crime he didn't even commit.

'I've got to be strong. I have to do this for Kai… Even if he totally hates my guts…'

He was roughly shoved into a room after his handcuffs had been unlocked by a security guard.

"Welcome home."

The door was slammed and locked.

There was silence.

Tyson scanned the room quickly, afraid to make eye contact with the other inmates; his nerves were screaming at him to get the hell _out _of there. He found the floor mildly interesting as he stood still, afraid to go deeper in the room.

They were on break time, in the "break room". There was a small, old square TV that hardly even worked sitting behind a thick wall of glass. Its screen was a dome, the opposite of a flat-screen, which gave the impression that it must've been at least a couple of years old. Tyson thought those types of TVs were extinct by now.

There were a couple of broken chairs tossed in front of it. The seats were so grimy that if you sat on them, the layers of bacteria would cause you to slide off. But apparently, some of the prisoners had found a way to stick themselves to the chairs without duct tape, and watched the only electronic in the room with mild indifference.

The floor – well, there wasn't much to say about the floor other than it direly needed to meet a mop, and possibly a repair man. The walls and ceiling were in the same condition. The lights overhead flickered and were spotted with dead bugs half-melted onto the cylindrical bulbs.

And the inmates.

Tyson knew he didn't belong here, and was afraid to even move a muscle.

From what Tyson was able to see in his two-second scan, most of them were burly, giant oafs that were older than him by a couple of years. They were aged to about twenty, from what Tyson could guess. Many of them had scars… and some of them looked fresh.

A voice to Tyson's left spoke in a Persian accent. "Hey look, Fox. It's that World Champ guy."

Tyson's physical body was already frozen; the permafrost extended to freeze his insides as well.

"Yeah, Axe. Didn't I tell you we'd be the lucky ones to get'im in _our_ prison?"

"I know, boss. You were right."

Tyson's eyes flicked up for a second to see what was going on.

All of the prisoners were trained on him with their hard eyes, immobile. The way they were perched on their seats, against the wall, sitting on the floor – just the way they _were_ – it intimidated him. Even if he was standing and they were sitting, it was like they _loomed_ over him with some kind of dominance. Like they were threatening him, like something was going to happen to him no matter what he did.

And no matter what, he had no where to run.

He was a kitten trapped in a lion's den full of vicious beasts that hadn't eaten in a week.

_Fox _and _Axe_'s conversation continued on.

"Looks like I won the bet. He's _mine_," said the voice of the Fox guy.

Tyson's heart hadn't slowed down, but only sped up with Fox's choice of words.

Tyson felt something change around him, and looked up, only to be face-to-face with Fox.

Fox loomed over him, staring him down with dark eyes that were hard as metal. Tyson was trapped in that gaze like a fish caught in a net, being reeled back in to the fisherman's boat. Fox's gaze… it was… feral. Like he was a starved fox, staring at a bloody slab of meat dangling in front of him with an 'all-you-can-eat free buffet' sign attached.

"_Hullo._"

A second figure came up beside Fox, and now two males were hovering over him. Tyson's back was flat against the cracked, gray bricks behind him. He was so uncomfortable with how close they were getting to him. He didn't know when Fox's extremely tanned, sinewy, tattooed arm had been placed over his head, against the wall.

The Persian guy, Axe, spoke again. "Hey, Fox, can I get some action too? I mean, you did mention in the bet that I-"

A giant fist collided with Axe's jaw.

"Do you _want_ your position back? I kindly offered to pass it on to this wimp, but I can make you _both_ share the title," snapped Fox, turning his feral gaze for one second towards Axe, his right hand still clenched.

Axe's somewhat sun-kissed face blanched, skin contrasting against the trail of blood that now ran out the corner of his mouth, suddenly seeming sickened. "N-no, boss, never mind, you can have him, he's all yours," and with that, the younger-than-Fox male took a couple of steps back.

"Good."

Tyson was terrified.

"Aw look, bitch, you're shivering."

Tyson's eyes were wide, they were watering, they couldn't escape Fox, they couldn't _see_.

Fox brought his face closer to the shorter male's.

"You know what we do to guys that cry?" He smiled sadistically. "Well, it's going to happen to you either way, whether you cry or not."

"W-we need to think up a nickname for him," stuttered Axe, wiping at the blood with his dirty jumpsuit's orange sleeve.

"Don't tell me what to do, ex-bitch." The way that Fox didn't even take his eyes off of Tyson when talking to Axe made Tyson think that Fox didn't hear what Axe had said – he was inspecting the fresh carcass that lay before him. Fox licked his lips quickly, his head subtly cocking to one side. Did he even have _eyelids_?

"So. How'd you kill'im." That deep voice rattled Tyson's insides.

"I…" Tyson stuttered, nearly forgetting to reply, his voice coming out small. "I… didn't… kill… him…"

Fox's lips peeled back to let out a loud, barking laugh, revealing teeth that looked sharper than any regular person's. But maybe that was just because Tyson was scared to death?

"That's what they all say." His other large hand placed itself against the wall awfully close to the World Champ's head. Now Tyson was completely trapped, barricaded by this big, burly prisoner.

"Tell me how you killed him. Or I'll kill you."

Tyson opened his mouth, no sound coming out.

"You'd better do what he says, kid, or he seriously _will_ kill you," said Axe.

"Hmm. You're too pretty to kill. You have your… _other _uses." Fox continued. Had he even blinked _once_ since their 'conversation' started?

"I'm called Fox 'cuz people say I resembles one," he said, a cold humor reflecting in his metallic eyes, "and plus I brutally murdered a bunch'a peep's with juss' my hands. That Persian guy, my ex-bitch, is called Axe 'cuz he split someone's head open with one. And now we gotta think of somethin' fittin' for _you_.

"I know. You're a _beyblader _right? So you'll be called _Blade_. Well, I'll be callin' you _bitch_, since that's what you're gonna be," he said, putting a finger under Tyson's chin and jerking his head up even more, "but the name's fittin'. And I bet you killed that _Kai_ with it, somehow, since your pathetic life revolves around that gay game."

Fox pushed himself from the wall, turning around.

The whole room was silent; they had watched the entire scene. They were ready to listen carefully to whatever Fox had to say. Apparently, Fox was the leader of the pack. Everybody seemed to fear him, even if they were older than him.

"Guys, this is _Blade_, A.K.A. Bitch," Fox said, hissing the rest of his sentence, "But if I ever catch any of you calling him that last name, you're _dead_. He's _mine._"

The others nodded vigorously, "yeah"s and "sure, Fox"s coming from various inmates. A couple gulped in fear, some tried to hide their emotions, but failed.

A loud bell went off somewhere in the facility, and the door opened. A bunch of security guards filed in, loaded down with weapons and other things that scared the crap out of Tyson.

Finally, after most of the men had filed out, the prison guard Tyson recognized from when he first came in to the hellhole came up to him, roughly grabbing his arms behind his back and locking him up with handcuffs. Tyson was lead down several corridors and flights of stairs.

The hallway was badly lit with bug-melted-lights, and they flickered as if there wasn't enough power to go around. Thick, metallic doors lined the walls, and the guard stopped them at one of them. He opened the door, unlocked Tyson, shoved the beyblader in, and closed it.

Tyson collapsed in on himself, falling to the floor to hug his knees to his chest. He was hyperventilating. At least here, _here,_ Fox couldn't get at him…

"Why hello _again_ Blade A.K.A. Bitch. I forgot'ter mention that when I say you're my bitch, you're my bitch _24/7_. And lucky you, we're _cell buddies_!"

Tyson fainted.

* * *

Blade

stood in the corner of a grimy gray-tiled room, freezing cold water shooting out of a nozzle to drip down his bare shoulders, back, and legs. He was trying to go unnoticed – well, as unnoticed as one_ could_ go when showering with a large amount of people at the same time. Well, he thought, at least Fox had been held up by some officers, so he likely wouldn't appear on the scene for a while.

He ran his tanned hands through his unusually long, dark blue locks that were sticking to his wet shoulders and back. Tyson hadn't bothered to cut his hair in quite a few months – there was just no need to. He glanced around quickly, noticing that a _lot_ of the guys were staring at him. Maybe growing his hair out hadn't been such a good idea…

A measly number of cheap suds ran into Tyson's eyes, and he made a feeble attempt at swiping them out of his vision. But just as he did so, somebody jumped at him.

"Auuugh!" Tyson yelled, being in a harassing position for the third time that day. "Get OFF me, you goddamn perv!" he roughly began to push at the taller male's shoulders, trying to force him away. This tactic didn't work.

Teeth sunk into the side of his neck, and he let out a howl of pain. Others were coming closer, too, but probably not to _help_ the victim.

"You're mine," a guy with a Persian accent growled against Tyson's neck, "an' that son-of-a-beech _Fox _ain' here, so he can't do nuthin' 'bout it!"

All of the suds were finally gone from his eyes, and he glanced through his pain at the harasser, who was none other than Axe. "Let go of me!"

Axe removed his mouth, leaving a deep bite mark. It was almost vampiric. And that sun-kissed hand atop Blade's chest began to hastily make its way down… The others were catcalling like beasts…

'This can't be happening… This can't be happening _again_… First Fox, now Axe… N-no… I c-can't take it… Dragoon, _help me!!_'

The caterwauling stopped. Bodies went flying viciously in all directions, and just as Axe was getting somewhere with his evil idea, he was ripped off of Tyson by a tanned hand that the World Champ was none too happy to see.

"WHAT THE _FUCK_ ARE YOU DOING TO **MY** PROPERTY," Fox roared, the more-of-a-demand-rather-than-a-question echoing back at them all at least five times. He was definitely _not_ the answer to the beyblader's prayers. Tyson pressed himself against the wall, forgetting the grime, eyes widening in horror. The water funneling down the drain was dyed crimson red with Axe's blood.

Axe's unconscious, ragged body was strewn on the floor, and Fox's deathly crossfire-of-a-gaze landed on Tyson.

* * *

"Are you _sure _you're alright, Tyson? You look really peaky… and it looks like somebody's been beating you up really bad," said the Chief, leaning closer towards the glass barrier in order to better analyze his friend. Apparently, he'd forgotten that he had glasses tucked into the brown locks of his hair.

'Blade' raised his hands and waved them in front of him, a grin plastered on his face. "Geebus, what are you, my _mother_? Don't you worry 'bout me, Chief. I'm A-O.K.!" His eyes were smiling as he gave a thumbs up to his younger (and smarter) friend.

"Of course I'm going to worry! You're in JAIL! Probably for the rest of your life!" cried Kenny. "You'll never be able to live like a normal person!"

"Even if I got out of jail, I'd never be able to able to live normally ever again," retorted Tyson quietly, spacing out. Kenny misinterpreted his reply.

"Duh, you have a _criminal record_ now. There's no way you'll ever be able to do anything else. It's not that I'm blaming you – you just wouldn't, no – _couldn't_ - murder Kai. But the problem is trying to prove that you didn't do it, since you _yourself_ said that you did." Kenny banged his fist on his side of the table. "_Why _did you do that, again?! Please _enlighten _me!"

"I-it's complicated," said Tyson, eyes darting to his friend's face. "Trust me, I would tell you everything if I could… but I don't want you to get hurt. It's best if you just stopped coming to visit me."

A string of random, startled sounds burst from Kenny's nerdy mouth, specks of spit dotting the glass from the enzyme-y spray. "W-WHAT?! Are you INSANE? WE MISS YOU LIKE CRAZY! You NEED to keep in contact with us or WE'LL be the ones to suffer! We know you didn't do it! You COULDN'T'VE! Why do you want us to leave you alone?!"

"Chief, please… It's for your own good," Tyson stood from his seat, and turned to face one of the guards. Kenny was yelling at him to stop and come back while Tyson began to raise his arms for the handcuffs. He knew the procedure well enough now after three whole months of being in prison.

Several rough knocks on the glass made Tyson's eyebrows furrow in frustration. Couldn't Kenny just leave him alone?!

"Tyson, get your ass back here immediately. I need to talk to you."

Tyson's arms paused in mid-air, and he flipped back around, wide-eyed, to see a seventeen-year-old male with the same pale skin tone as Kai practically hovering over Kenny's small form. Flaming red hair, several strands falling into crystal-clear, crisp, blue-gray eyes… Yuriy.

**(FYI, **_**Yuriy**_** is **_**Tala**_**'s Japanese name. I think I'm going to call him Yuriy, because "Tala" reminds me of Teletubbies (I don't own that, either). Blegh. Please see the author note at the end of this chapter. Oh yeah, and now that I've got your attention… REVIEW.)**

Kenny squirmed under Yuriy's intense aura, finally giving a meager wave to Tyson before disappearing from the room.

The young adult was already seated, forearms resting statically on the table. Yuriy was never a guy to joke, but Tyson couldn't recall ever seeing him look so seriously worn out and drained.

Yuriy was leaning towards the glass, jail phone in hand, his eyes glued to Tyson's face. It kind of creeped him out, how secretive the wolf-like male was acting. He leant in, too, although Yuriy's drilling stare was making him nervous. It was almost the same intensity as Kai's used to be.

"You're good at acting."

"Uhh," Tyson replied.

"Acting like everything's alright to keep from troubling your friend."

"Heh," the World Champ's tan fingers started to play with the long dark-blue ponytail hanging over his shoulder, "yeah… it's all I can do right now to keep them and _myself_ in check…"

They stared each other down for a minute, Tyson cracking under Yuriy's constant stare. He had to avert his eyes.

"There's no way you could have killed him." Yuriy stared unblinkingly at Tyson, reading him like a book. For a second, Tyson saw Fox's ugly mug instead of the good-lookin' cold-hearted wolf beyblader, and forced himself to see through his hallucination.

"How do you know that?" Tyson asked warily, although he was screaming 'INNOCENT!' on the inside.

"Boris," Yuriy's face was hardly fazed, but hatred burned in his icy eyes and dwelled in his words. "He sent me… pictures."

"Of what?"

"Kai."

If Tyson had been drinking something, it would have been all over the glass wall like Kenny's spit. "Kai?!" Tyson exclaimed. "How is h-"

"Keep it down!" Yuriy growled into the phone threateningly. "This place is _crawling_ with Boris' workers. Do you want them to overhear?"

"Wait… Can't they tap the lines here?" Tyson's eyes grew wide with the fear that was dwelling inside him for the past three months.

"They can, they do, but so do _we_."

"We who?"

"The Blitzkrieg Boys. Ian, Spencer and Bryan are on the site and are filling in a fake conversation for them to listen to while we talk privately. That's why we can't let them see our faces, or the mouthing won't match the fake track."

"Oh, I get why you're being so secretive now."

"Good job." It was always hard to tell when Yuriy was being sarcastic or not. "Look, we need to get down to it just in case we run out of time, which is highly likely."

"O.K., what's your mission, soldier?"

"Like I was saying," Yuriy continued, "we know Kai is alive. So I need to know why you voluntarily put yourself in here."

Tyson's face was solemn. "It was to save Kai. I was told he would be killed unless I followed Boris' orders."

Yuriy's expression didn't change when he heard about Tyson's sacrifice. "Boris sent those pictures to me because he was threatening to kill Kai unless I rejoined Biovolt. I believe Voltaire's after the most powerful bitbeasts, which explains why he's starting off with the three of us. The company's still down, but they're planning to rebuild it."

"They're trying to kill two birds with one stone," Tyson muttered, "trying to get you and me to join them with Kai as a ransom. But... Sorry, but, you don't look like the type of guy who would really give a shit about a hostage."

"I'm genetically modified to have wolf traits," Yuriy said, "and wolves are very loyal. When you're in a pack, you'll do anything for your fellow members. Kai and I weren't close but we suffered through the same things… We've been in the same pack since we were little… and… I've changed. I won't abandon him anymore. He is… my friend."

Tyson swore that he'd never heard Yuriy say so much at once, or with such… _feeling_. Well, there was definitely no feeling audible in Yuriy's voice, but his choice of vocabulary was different from the last time Tyson heard him speak.

"And since Kai is part of my pack, that makes you part of my pack too."

"So the rest of the Bladebreakers are also in it?"

"No."

"Huh?"

There was the slightest of smirks on Yuriy's face for a split second, and then it was gone. "I need to know everything you know."

Tyson was confused with the sudden change of topic, but continued nonetheless. "Oh, uh…" He leant in as much as he could without looking _too_ suspicious. He whispered as quietly but as clearly as he could into the phone to avoid having to repeat the message. "Boris told me he'd break me out of jail to take me to Kai when the public's convinced that I'm in here for good."

"That should be soon. The media has pretty much moved on to other happenings."

There was an awkward silence, and Yuriy blinked twice to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. His thin red eyebrows furrowed together.

"Why are you crying."

A shiny tear rested in the middle of Tyson's cheek, a thin, glistening tail connecting it to the corner of his eye.

"I…" Tyson's voice was hardly audible, and the poor man was trying hard to keep it under control. "I'm… really sorry," his head tilted downwards to hide the tears away from Yuriy.

"You shouldn't be happy about Boris coming after you."

"I-it's just that…" Tyson glanced up through his watery vision, a look of pure misery on his face, the edge of madness visible in the reflection of his eyes. Yuriy sighed inwardly – he didn't have the time for sob stories – but he could see the intense torture that played behind Tyson's schizophrenic expression, and he knew that if they boy didn't tell somebody about it soon, he'd crack for good. He wouldn't normally – in Tyson's words, give a shit – about this in similar situations_, but_… Tyson _was _a part of his pack...

Tyson saw the raw loyalty in Yuriy's pale, vivid eyes. It was coded, impossible for the average Joe to see – but if you knew the programming language, it was decipherable.

"What is it."

"Fox…" Tyson inhaled, his breath rattling, his shoulders shivering. He spoke slowly in an attempt to keep from stuttering and breaking down completely, "and Axe… and the rest of _them_," such disgust and hatred drenched that word, "they have done… unimaginable things."

His tanned hand covered his eyes, several silent sobs escaping him.

"Tyson…" Yuriy sighed after a moment, glancing up at the guards. They were starting to look impatient and suspicious. Frankly, Yuriy was taken aback that they weren't bothering to listen in to their conversation personally. He deduced that they probably were not Boris' workers. The blader in question wiped at his face with the back of his free hand and looked up through bloodshot eyes, purple-y black bags decorating their underbellies. Tyson was shocked to see some sort of emotion on Yuriy's face; sympathy, understanding, and – was that _anger_? He spoke through his teeth.

"Kai isn't going to be happy when he hears that. The overwhelming need for revenge consumes both of us. It's very _disadvantageous_."

Tyson was speechless, his mouth slightly open as if to say something.

"Look… I wish… I could do something… to help you." Yuriy said his sentence slowly – he was treading on uncharted territory. Niceness was not his thing, nor volunteer service. "I might not sound like it, but I do. You shouldn't be stuck with this "Fox" and "Axe" for much longer. Just try to grin and bear it. Keep in mind that you won't have to live your life here. We're going to stay close and track Boris, so when he comes to get you, just know you won't be alone." Yuriy sighed again and furrowed his eyebrows a second time, an opaque look of remorse visible on his features. This was the only time he averted his heavenly eyes to the dirty table top. "If you end up getting abducted by Boris… Things might not change."

Tyson blinked slightly-sane eyes, his dark crazy-plus-insomnia bags seeming to be a lot darker with Yuriy's last words. "You're not telling me that Boris ra-"

"Pretend to be talking to me. I'm going to call Bryan and tell him we're done. Don't move until I nod twice." Yuriy leant in even more, moving subtly so that he was perfectly lined up with Tyson. The less chance the guards could see what he was doing, the better. Yuriy made a swift movement with his right hand up to his face, and then shifted it back while closing his eyes, giving the impression of him trying to fix his hair. It was when Yuriy quickly pushed on something attached to his ear that Tyson noticed the very small chip hanging there.

Yuriy stared straight at the World Champ while talking softly, the words almost inaudible on Tyson's side of the glass. It was Russian. Yuriy made another hair-fix move, and subtly nodded twice.

"I'll see you later, Tyson. Hopefully." Yuriy paused, counting in his head to the amount of seconds he told the others to stop the track at, and stood up from the crappy chair. "And good luck." He tried to give an encouraging smile to the other beyblader, and was only slightly successful. But Tyson understood that Yuriy wasn't able to show friendliness, and gave him a grin back.

"Thank you."

As Yuriy was walking out of the room, Tyson stood up and shouted, "COME BACK SOON!" Hey, it was a good attempt at covering their secretive conversation as a regular, friendly chat. Yuriy turned his head to deadpan at Tyson, inwardly sweat-dropping. Tyson saw the smallest of smiles on his icy features as he closed the heavy door behind him.

"Alright, wise-guy. Back to your cell."

Yuriy's momentary fixer wore off; Tyson deflated as soon as the handcuffs were on him again. He knew what was waiting for him when he got back.

At least he knew that Kai was alive.

* * *

**ΩΩΩ - Time Jump: two months behind the present - ΩΩΩ**

Voltaire growled, breath fogging up a small patch of glass in front of him. He narrowed his age-clouded steel eyes, glaring down at the scientists in the operating room below. The room was a part of the giant basement lab where Dranzer was being held, although she was out of view. They were surrounding a thick glass tube. In the middle of the platform sat a miniature chip with a picture of a twisting, graceful dragon on it.

"Why can't they extract the Dragoon?" Voltaire snapped at the young assistant by his side. The woman jumped at the loudness, as Voltaire had been completely silent for half an hour. "Make yourself useful and ask them what the hell they're doing."

The woman turned immediately and walked a short distance to an electronic panel on the wall. She pushed a button and spoke into a circular speaker.

"Mr. Hiwatari orders a report of your progress," she said, taking her finger off of the button. A couple of seconds later, and a crackly response came back. Frustrated voices rang in the background.

"We've tried everything to extract the bitbeast, but it is too strong. We can't obtain our objective."

"Idiots," Voltaire hissed, "I might as well just do this _myself_ since nobody around here is competent enough to do anything right!"

"Sir, don't go down there! It's dangerous!" the assistant called, running after the aged man that had started to make his way down the stairs. She took two steps down, but hesitated, and made her way back to the observational glass dome.

Voltaire prowled through the room, shoving the scientists who tried to shoo him out to the side. He looked up, taking in the massive tube, and then glared at the chip.

His old, leathery hand grabbed a lever and pushed it all the way up fiercely, ignoring the cries of the scientists. "You'll damage the Dragoon!" A vile, fluorescent green liquid began to fill the empty space, rushing in noisily from the plumbing above it. The bitchip rose, bubbles escaping from underneath it, and it floated in the soup. There was no reaction.

"Where's the electricity supply button?" He snapped at the nearest researcher, and they pointed at one of the many identical buttons. This button was outlined with heavy black. Voltaire smashed it with his thick finger.

Purple and white branches of electricity shot through the liquid, disappearing and reappearing in the substance, its deadly crackling echoing through the glass. The rampant electricity suddenly sprung to the wires and pipes connected to the tube; the lights began to flicker. The beychip glowed with a pale blue aura.

Voltaire's eyes widened. He bolted for the stairs.

There was an explosion. Glass flew everywhere. Electric, acidic liquid flooded from the container that no longer existed, splaying out on everything in the room. The scientists screamed. The assistant jumped back as something broke through the upper observation dome.

Shakily, she looked up, pushing the hair that blew around wildly in the sudden wind out of her eyes, pieces of glass sticking out of her limbs in random places. Through the semi-transparent cloud of debris, two aggressively glowing eyes looked at her. A deep growl rumbled the now unified room, pieces of the ceiling shaken loose and falling. And then, the creature lowered its giant head.

Voltaire stared at the godly, massive beast, its phantom-like form astoundingly beautiful but deadly. It growled fiercely at him, its needle-like, razor-sharp teeth showing. The dragon spirit glared at the old man with a grudging hatred; if Tyson was present, the spirit would gladly be able to kill the vile man. Voltaire backed up as far as he could, acid-burned legs useless. Actual fear and astonishment reflected in the sheen of his cloudy eyes. His long gray hair whipped around his creased, shocked face.

The Dragoon reared its head to gaze farther into the laboratory at a motionless, glowing fiery spirit in a tube similar to his own and roared in anguish. Bigger chunks of the ceiling crumbled on top of the burned corpses of the scientists who were half submerged in the electric acid.

With a flash, the Dragoon disappeared back into its bitchip. It sat motionlessly on the pedestal, a metallic island in the middle of an acidic ocean.

Voltaire closed his eyes, leaning against the steps that were luckily higher than the liquid that covered the floor. Heels clacked against pavement, and two hands grabbed his arm. "Sir, allow me to help you," the assistant said. Voltaire shakily stood up, some smaller debris falling from his clothes and hair, and his employee helped him to limp from the disaster site slowly.

* * *

**ΩΩΩ - Time Jump: Continued - ΩΩΩ**

Boris held the blue bitchip between the fingertips of his left hand, staring first at the creature contained within, then through the gaping hole in the floor to the extensively damaged laboratory beneath. Most of the acid had evaporated through the hole in the ceiling by now. The liquid was too dangerous to touch, so the cleanup crew just left the room alone.

'Who knew such power could come from this bitbeast? Then again, it is the world's strongest.' Boris thought.

'Well… _one_ of the strongest.' He opened his clenched right hand to look at a dark bitchip. A black phoenix stared back.

**ΩΩΩ - Time Jump: Finished - ΩΩΩ**

* * *

The door complained as it was opened, the creaks breaking the heavy silence inside the dark room. The light bulb hanging from the ceiling had long since blown itself out, rendering the trapped beyblader completely blind for months on end.

Boris shifted his red-and-black goggles from his forehead to place them over his eyes, scanning the room with his newly improved infrared vision. Kai was still slumped over on his side, wrists chained together. A rat skittered across the floor, but the teenager didn't budge.

Boris let himself into Kai's cell.

He kicked Kai, who responded by moving ever so slightly.

"Just checking to see if you're alive," the evil man said, "can't have you dying just before Tyson arrives."

Kai's eyes snapped open, even though he knew he wouldn't be able to see.

Boris smirked darkly. He knew that would get the younger man out of his reverie.

"We're breaking him out tomorrow. And I am going to get my chance to get _acquainted _with your buddy."

A flare of rage shot through Kai's previously lifeless crimson eyes. He was very weak, but his anger breathed life into his will.

And where there's a will, there's a way.

Kai slowly pushed himself up to sit with his back against the bars, speaking with a voice that hadn't been used in a very long time.

"Don't you _dare_ touch him."

Boris knelt in front of the phoenix-less male, placing a finger under his chin and tilting his face up. He smiled evilly again. "Don't you worry, now. You'll get to see him. I'll bring a portable TV in here and set up a camera in the other room so you can see _exactly_ what I'm gonna do."

Kai ground his teeth.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Your… _passion_ is greater when you're pissed beyond belief."

A low growl escaped Kai. Then a memory came back to hit him full force.

He remembered Boris' ugly face hovering near the bars. His old thoughts at the time rushed back to him and took over his mind.

'_I swear... I will __**KILL **__you.'_

* * *

So, what'd you think of my subliminal messaging? (The review thing in the middle of the chapter). ;) Please, please review. :(

I'd like to make a **poll**:

**Would you prefer me to switch 'Yuriy' back to 'Tala'? Send me a review with your opinion!**

The next chapter is the climax, and the chapter after that should be the end, if the story continues with the mental plan I made today.

Thanks for reading. And _please, PLEASE __**review.**_

_Phoenix-Roar_


	6. Fusion

**Celebration! **Over 1000 hits!

**Future Story****?:** I came up with a one-shot TYKA story idea. I might actually write it after this one's done, so keep on the look out. I might also write two one-shot Gravitation fics (:squeals: I love Gravitation!).

**Disclaimer:** Kinomiya Takao (Tyson Granger) and Hiwatari Kai and all likeness of Beyblade is © HUDSON SOFT/TAKARA/HASBRO, BEYBLADE PROJECT, TV TOKYO, Nelvana.

**FOREWARNINGS:**** TYKA (although no romance-y scenes yet), Lots of violence (which means lots of blood), mature themes and explicit situations, lots of swearing, DEATH (you'll just have to read on to see who gets cut out of the picture, ne?).**

* * *

_Merciless_

_Chapter VI_

_Fusion_

Tyson backed up as his cell partner approached with an air of dominance and power. Fox was so trained on the younger male that he failed to hear the approaching footsteps. Tyson's stormy eyes flicked to the small door window to see jail guards.

"Why don't you put up a little resistance this time instead of pretending like you're a doll?"

"You want resistance?" Tyson's lips curved into a devious smirk, an expression that Fox had never seen on him before. It took him by surprise.

The jingling of keys and the opening of the cell door also caught him by surprise, and Tyson took the opportunity to kick him hard in the nuts. Fox fell over in pain, howling curses.

"Good enough for ya?"

One of them prowled in, grabbed his upper arm, and yanking him out. As the door closed, Tyson gave Fox the middle finger, and the inmate growled angrily before being closed in.

Tyson was dragged down the hallway, his legs stumbling clumsily underneath him. Ordinary workers approached them, shouting and taking out their pistols.

"What are you doing?" "Prisoners aren't allowed to be out –"

Bang. Bang. Bang.

One by one, they tumbled to the floor like dominoes, red liquid gushing from their heads as though they were giant popped water balloons.

Alarms rang throughout the building as they sprinted up the steps. The hallway was lighter as actual sunlight filtered in through small, high-placed windows; they were above ground. Tyson had never been so thrilled to see the sun's rays, but he didn't have time to enjoy it as the group ushered him through exiting double doors. There was a very loud, constant noise, but Tyson couldn't tell what it was through all of the chaos. High, concrete walls surrounded the jail, and gunshots were fired from several watch-guard towers. Others were running around, waving their weapons through the air fiercely. When had it become a battlefield? The hair on Tyson's head stood on end as he yelped, some of the ammunition barely whizzing past him. His "body guards" shot back, hardly getting injured due to their preplanning. They had brought long shields, which conveniently clasped onto their arms.

A rope ladder fell on top of Tyson's head, and before he knew it, Boris' men were prodding him up it. A helicopter hovered swiftly over the ground, matching with the sound that the beyblader noticed upon exiting the building.

The blue-haired teenager collapsed on the helicopter floor from exhaustion and gravity; the pilot was making a hasty getaway. Bullets ricocheted off of the vehicle's outer shell, indenting it.

'C'mon, Yuriy. Now's your chance to prove how loyal you really are.' Tyson thought, staring at the quickly receding ground through the open hatch. Boris' minions were busy at work rolling up the ladder, careful not to fall out.

Tyson sighed in frustration as his wrists were put in handcuffs yet again behind his back. It was almost like he hadn't even left that stupid jail.

* * *

A sleek, black motorcycle came to life with a loud roar, pulling away from the jail's concrete wall against which it was parked. It sped along the fast-paced road, weaving dangerously through the traffic jam that had started to build up on said artery road of the city. People screamed, yelled, swore, and honked their horns at the crazy young driver, who drove with such ferocity that only a person who was one hundred percent focused on getting somewhere could.

A black helicopter zoomed across the sky hundreds of meters up, the motorcyclist's only clue of direction.

And he was hell-bent on following it.

* * *

Kai was laid parallel to the small television screen, eyes squinting at the shuffling white-and-black fuzz every now and then. Had screens ever been this bright? He couldn't remember. It burned his corneas to stare at it.

After being submerged in darkness for almost four months solid, even Tyson's favourite shirts would probably be too much for Kai's eyes to handle.

Tyson.

Kai's eyes widened as the screen flickered, turned blue, and then displayed a grainy black-and-white video in live time. Kai forced himself to breathe, as he suddenly found himself holding his breath.

The beyblader he hadn't seen since the incident in front of the building was lying crumpled on a cot. Boris was blocking out everything else with his big fat ugly face, adjusting the lens of the camera and smiling evilly at it.

A shuffle of clothing behind him reminded him of the female assistant that Boris instructed to be 'the go-between messenger girl'. If Kai wanted Boris to stop whatever he was doing to Tyson, he was supposed to alert the woman standing near the exit, and she would, in turn, go and alert Boris. And then, Boris would gladly come back and continue the torture on Kai.

"It's all a matter of who you love more," he recalled Boris cooing mockingly the previous day, "yourself, or Tyson?"

* * *

"Where's Kai!" Tyson demanded, trying his hardest to glare up at the Russian man.

"You really want me to tell you?" Boris said, a knee on either side of the Japanese blader. "Alright, _fine._" And the man commenced to speak in Russian.

"Argh!" A cry of frustration, a hard swipe of stubby nails (which caused a proud smirk from his single audience member in the other room), and a couple of blood drops from Boris' cheek later, Tyson found himself in an extremely dangerous situation. A sharp knife's blade was pressed against his throat, threateningly close to his jugular.

The door handle began to twist and turn, but Boris ignored it.

"You wanna try that again?" the man sneered against Tyson's ear, biting it softly – not with love, but as a warning.

"Is _this_ what you've been doing to him?" Tyson whispered softly, horror-struck. He felt the lips now replacing the blade smile menacingly against his neck, and he knew that it was the truth.

The door handle stopped moving, and someone knocked on the door.

"Sir," the muffled voice of a female said from behind it.

Boris sighed, lifting his head from Tyson's neck just a little bit in order to reply. His booming, loud voice rattled Tyson. "What is it? I'm busy." The beyblader noticed Boris' trench coat – which he hadn't yet taken off – was loose and hung from the rapist's body. It pooled over Tyson.

Maybe, just maybe, Boris was stupid enough to carry around something dangerous in his pocket that Tyson could swipe and use against him. The coat was baggy enough; maybe he wouldn't feel it…

Tanned fingers slowly and stealthily inched their way to the side and up, delving softly into one of the pockets. Nothing. He tried again in another. Nothing. Maybe Boris wasn't as stupid as he seemed… But maybe he _was_ for not carrying around multiple weapons.

On the third attempt, they brushed against something small, and Tyson was about to ignore it, when he recognized the shape.

"Kai said he wanted you to stop, sir."

A cool wave flushed through him as he pulled it out and clenched his fist around it tightly.

A powerful, familiar feeling flooded from the object Tyson held in his hand, all the way up his arm, circulating through his whole body.

He felt whole for the first time in four months.

The older man smirked, looking up at the device that watched them. "Like hell I'm going to listen to you, Kai. Did you even dare to think I was going to keep my word for once? Wave to the camera, Tyson, you're on TV!" he said, pointing at a hastily set up camera in plain view with his dagger.

But Tyson didn't respond, or even move a muscle, for that matter. A strange breeze had started to pick up in the room, although there was absence of a window.

Boris stared down at him, mouth agape. A twisting _s_ shaped dragon insignia glowed with a pale blue aura from the middle of Tyson's forehead. His stormy irises actively glowed in the same way as the insignia, his pupils faded slightly, giving him an ethereal look.

Boris hastily jumped off of the Japanese teenager, backing towards the door. Tyson had started to visibly grow what looked like metallic claws. "On second thought, I suppose promises are meant to be kept."

Boris quickly let himself out and locked the door behind him.

He flipped out a cell phone, speed-dialling a number while jogging away from the scene.

"Tyson isn't human," Boris spoke as soon as the phone had been picked up on the other side of the line. "Somehow, he sort of… fused with Dragoon."

"IMBECILE!" Voltaire screeched. "HOW DID HE GET HIS HANDS ON IT?!"

Boris fumbled, putting his hand in all of the pockets he owned. "I must have dropped it… or he must have stolen it." He was in shit fathoms deep now.

Voltaire growled dangerously. "**Kill Kai. Now.** If Tyson breaks him out, and he is able to fuse with Dranzer, we won't be able to stop them without using the backup plan. And I won't use that unless my only option is to drag them down with me."

* * *

Kai's eyes were glued to the screen, no matter how badly it burned his eyes. The sole figure being taped, Tyson, somehow seemed different… and what was that _glowing _thing on his forehead_?_ Kai could sense a strange static in the air; the screen was getting increasingly grainy with what seemed to be interference. There appeared to be a strong gust in the room, small pieces of paper were circling its perimeter mid-air – and then all he could see was the black-and-white fuzz again.

A door creaked, and Kai quickly scrambled to the middle of the cell beside the glowing, humming screen. The light improved his situation, but not by much. The chains rattled, the lock came undone, and Boris let himself in for the umpteenth time.

"Well," Boris said, his back turned to the lock once he had redone it to make sure Kai couldn't escape, "it's been nice, but I have to kill you now." His right hand was tucked behind him.

"What?" Kai said, his fear kicking in adrenaline, "Why?"

'I can't die because of this jackass. I have to make sure Tyson gets out of here alive.'

"Because. Your gramps told me to." Boris began to approach him, his right hand coming out from behind him. It clenched the same dagger that he'd threatened Tyson with.

'No matter what, I have to get out of here.' An idea popped into his head, and he felt sick at the thought of executing it, but he had no other choice. Then again, it would allow Kai to get revenge for the countless sins that Boris had committed; not only to Kai, but to others. Like Yuriy. And that thought suddenly made the effort twice worth his while. 'Here goes… for an old friend, his other helpless victims, and… love.'

"I have a better idea." The dual-haired male suggestively leant in, collar bone jutting out scantily, the light of the screen illuminating him in all the right places. "Why don't you come get some?"

The older Russian stared at Kai, dumbfounded. After a moment, Kai realized that the man was literally _drooling._

Boris stared at Kai like he was a piece of meat. He analyzed Kai's expression in the eerie light of the television; he was certain that those crimson orbs were filled to the brim with lust. They _were_ filled to the brim – but it was not lust that filled them. It was pure, bitter rage, and the ultimate need for revenge.

Forgetting his mission, Boris was kneeled, leaning against Kai, kissing him fiercely. Kai cringed, suppressing a violent shiver, and quickly grabbed at the dagger loosely held in Boris' hand. Once Boris realized that Kai was trying to get the knife, he tightened his hold on it, although it was almost out of his grasp. They tossed and turned; Kai, clawing at Boris' right hand with all his might, and Boris, hanging on to that dagger and reaching towards Kai's neck with his other hand.

Kai was finally able to pull the weapon free. He stood hastily, as did Boris, who backed away from the armed teenager. "I'm going to kill you," Kai growled, "you're going to pay for everything." Kai only paused for a moment's thought before throwing his only weapon through the bars. It clattered against the wall.

Boris was speechless, panting and huffing. Kai could tell he was scared, and felt his ego swell. It encouraged him. "W-why'd you throw that away? Don't you need a weapon?"

Kai locked his fingers together and stretched, his knuckles popping. The small sounds echoed in the chamber, as if to foreshadow the events that would follow.

"I don't plan on using one." An evil smile crept on Kai's face, his blood-coloured eyes hard as diamonds.

Boris jolted towards the door. Kai let him struggle with the lock for a moment, enjoying the panic that radiated from the man.

Kai lunged at Boris, his eyes gone berserk.

* * *

The helicopter had landed on a giant factory, appearing to having been owned by a logging company years ago. Several warehouses were closely built like keys on a keyboard, allowing for easy access to each with minimal effort of transportation. There wasn't much around – it was kind of surprising that there could be such a desolate place as this in Japan, but just how sensible would it be to build a forestry factory in the middle of a megalopolis?

The roar of a powerful motor shook the trees, echoing through the quiet. The black motorcycle sped as fast as a bullet along the dirt road, the driver beginning to glow with a pale white aura – **CRASH** - the metal gates were chewed up and spit out, crumpled on the ground; gunshots, yells, all half-drowned out by the engine of the machine.

* * *

Kai blinked several times, as if just gaining consciousness. He was staring at nothing, head hanging loose as if he hadn't the energy to lift it, his shoulders slumped, arms limp. He was sitting on the floor. His body ached horribly. How did he get there?

His skin was covered in something sticky and warm, and some of his silvery hair strands were glued to his face. There was an awful coppery taste in his mouth, making him sick. The same flavour was in the air, the stench radiating from the ground. It attacked his senses, overloading them, making him even more dazed than he already was.

He placed two hands on the floor in front of him, confusion raking through him as he found it slippery with a substance. What was it? The teenager crawled on his hands and knees for a bit, unsure of what was happening. Eerie silence compressed him. His shaking right hand slipped as it landed on a circular object. He fumbled in the darkness to pick it up, and analyzed it with his sense of touch. Shrugging, he threw it to the side. He continued to search the ground, unsure of what he was looking for. A couple of objects later, he discovered a slime-covered rectangular object.

It was a lighter. Why there was one in his cell, he had no idea. Kai flicked it open. With a few (seemingly) loud clicks, a small flame burst forth from the metal container, the small light seeping forth to illuminate the area around him.

The cobblestone floor wasn't the same way Kai had remembered it being. It should have been a desolate shade of grey. So why was it dark red?

He held up the lighter, squinting with his exhausted eyes. Dark pink and purple bags sat underneath his lower eyelids, the result of endless stress and insomnia.

Kai inched forward on his knees, the light continuing to consume the darkness.

He froze when two dark blobs were illuminated. He squinted at them. They were feet. Chills ran up his spine. Who was that? Why weren't things clicking in his brain?

"Hello?" Kai called, moving so that the light would illuminate the entire person.

There was a television, and the person's head had been smashed through the screen, hidden inside the cheap wooden box. The glass was shattered into small shards that absorbed the light, glittering as though they were embers themselves. They were scattered across the victim's body and all over the floor.

Everything rushed back to him as soon as he realized that the person lying there was Boris, and that the man was now a corpse. The items scattered on the floor were belonged to him.

He yelped, falling backwards shakily. Pain shot from his palms as glass cut them and jutted from them.

He was sitting in blood. He was soaked with it.

And he quickly realized that it mostly wasn't _his own._

He was shaking like a leaf in the wind, his eyes wide with the most fear and horror he'd ever experienced in his life. He was panting.

He jumped as a voice boomed right in his ear, looking around in paranoia. Others joined in, screaming.

You killed him.

_You killed him._

_YOU KILLED HIM._

_**YOU'RE A MURDERER.**_

Both hands clasped around his ears, his eyes were squeezed shut. "STOP IT!" he cried. Were the shadows talking to him? No other living beings were present, from what he gathered.

'I need to calm down, find keys, get out of here before they catch me…' Kai thought frantically, hastily jumping to his tired feet. He vaguely registered the fire that had grown beside him. The lighter had clattered from his hand in his shock, and the tiny flame had hungrily begun to consume the blood as if it were a type of fuel.

He made his way towards Boris, searching in his pockets for cold metal keys. Kai did everything possible to not look at his face. Eventually he found them, the flames growing hastily, edging closer to him and the corpse, increasing the cold temperature of the room. He stumbled towards the lock, holding up one of the keys that were on the silver loop. Missing a couple of times, Kai finally got it in the keyhole, and turned. It didn't work. On the third key, the lock fell to the floor, and Kai hastily began to fidget with the silver chains. The backs of his dirty pants were getting singed.

He rushed out of the cell, closing the door hastily. Slumping against the cool wall, Kai found himself immobile with pain and self-disgust.

'I should burn with him,' thought Kai, 'I deserve it. But Tyson needs to get out alive. That's all that matters. And Voltaire...' his crimson eyes suddenly flashing like two glinting diamonds, '…Voltaire needs to pay.'

Slowly, Kai made his way from the huge bonfire and through the heavy metal door that had concealed him for months on end. He hissed silently and squinted as the harsh light attacked his oversensitive eyes.

He limped down the hallway, pressing his bleeding palms to the wall in order to keep going. Footsteps were coming from the corridor up ahead. 'Tyson...?'

Large men wearing BioVolt uniforms rushed down the hall, shouting in Russian at him.

"Get back in your cell!"

"What is he doing out?!"

'I must be going crazy,' Kai thought dazedly as they approached him, 'there's no way a wind could be picking up in a hallway without windows.'

Several seconds later, Kai felt an enormous slice of compressed air brush past him, and he watched as it slammed into the men like a bowling ball into pins. They crashed against the far wall and into each other, effectively knocking the wind out of them. The trio crumpled to the floor, unconscious. 'Wait…Wind… Dragoon?'

He looked the other way. Another figure was approaching him, one his age. "Tyson!"

The Japanese beyblader who didn't look entirely human anymore was standing behind him, a couple meters away. "_KAI _BUDDY! Glad to see me? Woah man, what _happened _to you? You're bleeding everywhere… Hey… are you listening to me?" The taller male was acting strange.

"Kai!" Tyson surged forward to save the Russian from hitting his head on the cobblestone floor. The bloody teenager rested limp in his arms, one eye open a crack. It gazed at him, the smallest shine of relief and contentment in its exhausted crimson depths. His bloody, cracked lips opened a bit to let limited sound out. "Sorry… 'm just relieved…"

"It's okay," Tyson said, his eyes wide with worry, "I'll get you out of here!" Carefully but quickly, he began to lift Kai up.

"Dranzer…"

"Yeah, we'll find her, too. Dragoon said he saw her, so I know where she is." Tyson smiled at Kai, and the Russian had never felt so reassured. He sighed as he fell unconscious against the Japanese blader's chest.

Tyson furrowed his brow, taking in Kai's unconscious face before taking off down the hallway.

'We only have a limited time before the whole building is on the lookout,' thought Tyson, running past another man he knocked the wind out of, 'and there are already a _lot_ of bad guys on our tail as it is!'

* * *

The dragon-morphed Tyson huffed and puffed in response to the impressive levels of adrenaline and power flooding his system. His heavy footsteps echoed throughout the umpteenth corridor they'd gone through, but Dragoon was telling him that this was it. They would be able to get Dranzer and then flee.

Eardrum-popping bangs greeted the pony-tailed beyblader as soon as he had run through the metal doorframe. He skidded to a stop, nearly dropping Kai as his momentum was almost too much for his Dragoon-improved arms to handle. Thanking the heavens, he quickly took note of the solid concrete fence that framed the high, metal bridge that Dragoon had led him to. He crouched down, minding to keep his head lower than the hand railing.

He placed Kai down gently and propped him up against the concrete, his silvery head falling to his chest. He reminded himself that Kai was still human, and one gunshot was all it took to kill a mortal.

The bangs were continuous, the sounds making him flinch. He knew, without having to look up, that all-too-familiar projectiles were going through the space he stood in only a few seconds ago.

The catwalk was suspended high, close to the ceiling of a large room. The concrete railing was luckily enough to act as a sort of shield for the two fugitives, but the floor was composed of crisscrossed black metal strips. Tyson didn't think that a bullet could fit through one of the small holes, but he didn't want to find out. He hoped that the BioVolt idiots would remain idiots for the time being and not shoot at them from underneath while he figured out what to do. Getting a bullet up the ass was not something on his to-do list.

Tyson suspected that Voltaire assumed they would take the bait, the bait being Dranzer, and would come through this room. After all, the place was just_ littered_ with cameras.

Judging by the amount of bullets showering them, almost all of the BioVolt guards were down there.

And _daaaaamn_, there were a _lot_ of them.

"Shit!" Tyson seethed, a clawed hand pulling at his hair in frustration. "What am I gonna do now?! I have to get Dranzer, but we can't crawl 'cause Kai's out cold, I can't carry him or we'll get shot, and I can't leave him here in case more assholes come while I'm breaking Dranzer out! Shit, shit, SHIT!! I made a _promise_!"

Frustrated tears pricked Tyson's eyes as he panicked.

A huge crash and proceeding yelling caused Tyson's head to jerk up. "What the fuck is going _on_ down there? Did they bring out a freaking _cannon_?!" The guards were still shooting their weapons, but, as Tyson learned from glancing upwards, far fewer bullets were flying past them.

He risked raising his head slightly above the railing level, just so he could see what was going on. The room looked like the front of a warehouse.

At the center of all the chaos was a shiny, black motorcycle with a glowing driver seated on it. It had crashed through the big, wooden export-and-import entrance, and wooden debris was scattered everywhere. Many of the guards were already down, although it was still like a human sea below.

The glowing motorcyclist was holding two guns, one in each hand, and was shooting like there was no tomorrow at either side. He slammed his booted foot on the breaks and leaped off it, successively doing a landing roll and popping back up, guns firing, while the vehicle skidded to the side and into more guards.

Even though the rider was indeed skilled, _nobody_ could avoid a hundred bullets flying at them.

"HEY!" Tyson screamed, suddenly angry beyond belief at the unfairness. He stood up and threw his arms out in front of him. A huge surge of wind blasted the area below, bodies falling instantly, taking down others with them. Four more slices of compressed air hit the ground, rumbling it.

Tyson was knocked backwards by two powerful blows, one to his right shoulder and one through the left side of his ribs. He yelled out in pain and looked down, watching blood start to seep from the wounds. Some bloody bastard shot him!

Just then, another loud motor entered the scene, and a familiar rusty car stopped just outside the entrance. The side door opened, and Tyson could not believe his eyes.

"KKKYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!" Kenny screamed, running through the opening made by the motorcyclist. In his clutches and resting over his right shoulder was… a… a…

_A bazooka?! _1

Loud explosions rang throughout the room, the force of the launching projectiles knocking small Kenny back each time. The boy was laughing like a maniac. Tyson found the will to chuckle through his pain. 'I must be going insane. Kenny? And a gun? Please tell me I'm dreaming…'

He took a closer look. 'Scratch that, thank God!'

Through the heavy smoke, Tyson squinted to see that most of the guards were down. The driver had abandoned his twin guns, and Tyson followed his white, ethereal aura that penetrated the smokescreen easily. He zoomed through the leftovers, bodies flying out of the way as he proceeded. It was unclear exactly _what _he was doing, but Tyson could hear loud, threatening, wolf-like growls and snarls emitting from the young adult.

Fifteen seconds later, and all of them had been taken care of. The driver limped back to the center of the room, several obvious gunshot wounds decorating him. He pulled off his helmet.

"Yuriy!" Tyson yelled, wincing at the pain shooting through his shoulder and side. It seemed, however, to be decreasing. He figured it was the power of Dragoon; otherwise he would have been long dead by now.

"Where's Kai?" Yuriy demanded, staring up at the injured, but alive, Japanese teen. He was glowing with a light-blue aura, similar to his own.

"He's with me!" Tyson replied loudly.

Tyson was startled when he saw a pale hand reach up in his peripheral vision. Jumping slightly, he whipped around to see Kai grasp the edge of the concrete wall, slowly standing to his feet.

The white glow came closer, and Yuriy jumped all the way up to the bridge with powerful legs, levying himself over the concrete barrier. His ice-blue eyes glowed ferociously, and a wispy, white wolf tail swished behind him.

A white insignia of a wolf was imprinted on his forehead, and it glowed with the same sheen. His red hair and the blood soaking his white jumpsuit and pale skin stood out profusely.

"Are you better?" Tyson asked with a concerned voice, placing a hand on Kai's shoulder. The teen was teetering over the side, and Tyson was worried he was going to fall over.

"Dizzy," Kai mumbled. He looked up to see Yuriy, and his eyes slightly widened.

"You…" The dual-haired Russian was at a loss for words.

A deep voice came from the metallic door frame, making all three bladers jerk up in response.

"How quaint. It's a get-together."

"Voltaire," Kai hissed, his hands balling into angry fists.

"How come you're still alive, Kai?"

A menacing smirk crossed Kai's lips. "I killed him."

After a moment, a smirk just like Kai's stretched Voltaire's leathery face, surprising them.

"He was a waste of space. He was plotting to overthrow me. So really, I should be thanking you," the old man said, putting a hand in his coat pocket. He got closer to them. Yuriy growled furiously, his voice husky with the mix of Wolborg.

"You deserve to die too, old prick," The redhead snarled, stepping past Tyson and Kai.

"Either I die, or you all die. And I'm not dying until I have my hands on your bitbeasts, so kiss your asses goodbye." His wrinkled hand emerged clutching something, and suddenly, his creased face became void of emotion.

There was silence.

Voltaire groaned as a pained expression crossed his face.

"Look out!" Tyson yelled, leaping backwards and pulling Kai along. Yuriy raised his arms in defence, curved, sharp claws at the ready.

Black flames had begun to consume Voltaire from bottom up, eating him whole. His form was cringing and writhing with an unbelievable pain, his body morphing. When they finally died back down to his feet, the man had entirely changed.

His silvery hair had become eerily white and thinner, his eyes midnight black. His wrinkled skin was pale to an extreme, giving him a dead look. All of his veins were clearly visible. His fingers were elongated into massive, deformed talons. His bones stood out. Two large towers of black fire had erupted from his shoulder blades, and they flexed like wings.

A black phoenix insignia was embellished into his wrinkled forehead.

"Boy," even his voice was warped to an extreme, the inside of his mouth like a black hole, dark smoke seeping from it as he spoke, "you couldn't handle Black Dranzer even if your pathetic life depended on it. She is _mine_, and I'll show you just how much destruction she can bring to this world."

"Break Dranzer free while I take him down." Yuriy commanded. "I have a score to settle with this bastard."

"But, you'll get hurt!" Tyson exclaimed.

Three powerful swoops of the black fire wings, and what they assumed was Voltaire was airborne.

"Just shut up and _do it_," growled Yuriy, breaking into a dash. He jumped, launching himself into the air by firmly placing his foot on the concrete barrier to get extra height, and collided with hell itself. The force of Yuriy's launch took them both down, out of sight.

"YURIY!" Tyson shouted while leaning over the barrier, frantically trying to see what was happening.

"C'mon," Kai nudged him, beginning to drunkenly limp forward, "we can't waste the opportunity he's given us."

Tyson lifted one of Kai's arms and wrapped it around his own shoulders, trying to speed up their pace. Kai's hand hovered over the wound in Tyson's right shoulder; the pain had settled into a mere throb. Dragoon was urging him to go down the staircase at the end of the catwalk. Trying to ignore the earthquake tremors that viciously shook their path, they made haste to the secondary shelf that the stairs exited to.

The metal, rickety stairs lead into an inner room that was large and full of scientific equipment. Labs were scattered throughout it, many containing large glass tubes filled with lime-green liquid. It was sickening and eerie; what were they planning to do with them?

Tyson swallowed painfully, trying to focus on finding Dranzer.

"I…" Kai muttered, drawing Tyson's attention, "I feel… warm." His crimson eyes were staring straight ahead at something.

Dragoon's master followed his line of vision and saw an indefinable form that glowed as if it were a binary star to our own.

"Dranzer!" Tyson exclaimed.

"How are we going to get her out?" Kai pondered aloud, brow furrowed. The tube was seven layers thick, and its radius was huge.

Tyson walked Kai over a couple of meters, before untangling himself from the other. "Stay here."

Kai watched intently as Tyson lined himself up with the tube and closed his eyes.

'Dragoon, I need all of your strength.' Tyson thought, concentrating on his inner partner. The blue dragon appeared. The Japanese blader reached out to stroke his scaled neck.

'_Anything to break Dranzer free.'_

Tyson was taken aback, as he recalled Dragoon growling at Dranzer's owner nearly half a year ago, but he nodded with a smile. Dragoon seemed to mimic his expression.

Tyson's arms rose, hands focusing on the tube.

A roar ripped from his lips, one unique to only a dragon, his glowing eyes suddenly wide open. Blue light shot outwards, blinding the entire lab. Kai shielded his eyes and face with his less-bloody left arm, trying to stay on his own two feet as a gale-force wind whipped everything.

The sound of glass shattering and a million shards hitting the ground was music to Kai's ears. He took his arm away; the glow and wind had died down.

But all he could see was fire.

Dranzer flew forth like a lit arrow. She pierced Kai.

The force of the impact knocked him backwards, although he seemed to be gracefully unconscious at this point.

"Whoa!" Tyson ran forward, just able to catch Kai with the ends of his fingers. He held on to him for a few seconds; everything had stilled.

"WHOA!" Tyson cried for a second time, dropping Kai and leaping backwards. Fire consumed him for a second. Like Voltaire, two towers of red flames shot from his back, flapping to set him standing upright again.

A red-hot phoenix insignia was welded into his forehead; his eyes and the symbol glowed like magma.

He was like a God.

Kai began to smoke; the blood on his skin was bubbling, vaporizing.

The atmosphere between them was humming, vibrant with various energies.

It was dangerous; it seemed that if either one of them walked into it, they would be instantly fried. But Tyson had never so strongly felt the need to be close to Kai.

North and south. Hot and cold. Forest and desert. Dark and light. Dragon and phoenix.

Opposites attract.

Without a word, both demigods sped back the way they came. They leapt over the barrier; Kai spreading his wings for a graceful float downwards, Tyson landing on his two feet effortlessly, like a cat.

The rumbling had stopped. It was silent like a graveyard. Small, black flames ate at the debris scattered on the ground, which had various sizes of cracks in it.

Voltaire lay on the floor in front of them, stiff and white as a ghost, black eyes still open. His black wings had dissipated, his bleach-white hair falling out rapidly. The talons had shrunk back into bony hands. His mouth was frozen slightly open, dark smoke floating out of his lifeless body. It was corroding his skin quickly, creating a vile smell.

"Ew man, that's gross." Tyson pulled the collar of his shirt up over his nose, his face scrunched up, clearly disgusted. He was suddenly ungrateful for his momentarily improved sense of smell.

A smile embedded Kai's face as he stared at the rotting corpse of his grandfather. It had erupted of pure joy. He didn't even so much mind the smell, because it was just another sign that his grandfather was finally, after so long, dead as a doorknob. He wouldn't have to see Voltaire for a long, long time, until he himself died and went to Hell.

But at least he had time before that happened. Even a week without Voltaire was good enough.

The smile disappeared, as Kai began to look around for something.

"Yuriy?"

"You find him," Tyson instructed, beginning to walk away, "I need to find Kenny and make sure he's OK."

"Yuriy! Where are you!" Kai called, nearly expecting his half-wolf companion to jump from the baluster and surprise him with a 'Here I am!'. And then they would all go home and be happy.

He spotted something lying on the ground.

'God, no…'

He sprinted towards it, dropping down on his knees.

"Kai…" that familiar voice croaked. Yuriy coughed, blood dribbling over his lips.

"Shit," Kai muttered. "You'd better not die, you hear me?!"

"Heh," Yuriy mumbled as Kai gathered him in his arms. He was paler than Kai had ever seen him; he was covered with blood and injuries that kept adding to it. The wolf insignia was duller than before, his lips were colourless.

"Tell me where your biggest injuries are, I'll sear them shut," Kai offered as more of a demand, his curved claws on his free right hand beginning to glow like hot coal.

"Don't… bother," Yuriy said quietly, his eyes trained on Kai's face, "there's nothing… you can do for me."

Kai growled. "I'm a bloody phoenix! I can heal you, can't I?!"

"I doubt… you have that kind of power," Yuriy whispered, his eyes drooping slightly. Not one to give up, Kai placed his hand over one of the bloodiest spots, and concentrated as hard as he could. A faint red light began to emit from below Kai's palm.

"Listen to me. You need to learn… to be… yourself, don't… keep yourself frozen. It… It would be nice to see the… the real Kai before… I… leave."

Yuriy's eyes microscopically widened as he witnessed Kai's face completely change.

Kai's eyes were glistening; the unshed tears were caught in the glow of his magma eyes, making them look like embers. His brow was pulled together in anguish. An extreme look of guilt, remorse, and sorrow had overwritten Kai's icy features.

"You must teach yourself to cry," the words wisped through white, hardly-moving lips, "to laugh," he coughed, "to smile," his eyes drooped again, "to love. Tyson needs… to see the real you, as… I have done."

"You'll get to see more of the real me, don't say things like that!" Kai exclaimed, still trying to convince himself it wasn't too late.

The red light from underneath Kai's palm dissipated as Yuriy weakly clasped it with his own cold hand. There was something in it.

"I will see you soon, Kai." Yuriy said, his eyes growing distant. "Oh… and… happy birthday, my friend."

Kai watched Yuriy's eyes become dull. The insignia was also lifeless, but the sign was still imprinted on his papery-white forehead.

The phoenix hybrid moved Yuriy's frozen hand to lie over his stomach, and opened his palm to look at what he had been given.

Black Dranzer's bit sat in his palm. It was cold like Yuriy's flesh. It bit into his warm hand like the metal handcuffs that had captivated him for so long.

He looked at Yuriy's face, which stared at him, but did not see him.

"Thank you for everything." Kai brushed some ash from his friend's motionless face, and gently closed Yuriy's white eyelids over his cloudy, icy blue eyes.

He removed his left hand from behind Yuriy's head after gently placing him to rest on the ground.

Taking both ends of the chip between his claw-like fingers, he exerted force from behind at the center. The chip snapped in half, a loud cry deafening him. Vile, black smoke erupted from inside the bit, curling upwards into the air.

He watched it with hatred until he could see it no longer. Turning his head, he saw Tyson helping Kenny stand. Sirens were drawing nearer.

There was one thing left to do.

Kai's fiery wings pumped powerfully. He jumped from the ground, his temporary wings carrying him up to the metal bridge. He landed on it and made his way back to the giant laboratory on the shelf.

He closed his eyes.

'Dranzer,' he reached out to feel for her. Surprisingly, she was right there.

'_Let's blow this place to smithereens.'_ It appeared the feeling was indeed mutual.

'You read my mind.'

Kai's aura exploded like a supernova, angry fire hungrily consuming everything. The warehouse's large, loft-like windows exploded outwards, the glass pieces falling like dusty snow. He surveyed the destruction. Satisfied with the raging inferno, he walked back out and floated down to where Yuriy rested.

The sirens were loud now. Many doors were being slammed shut. The phoenix wings snuffed themselves out, and everything else about Kai was human again, except his eyes and the symbol still present on his forehead. He scooped his arms underneath Yuriy and began to make his way out of the building.

Outside, officers passed him by, running into the building. Large, red fire trucks were stationed along the side of the warehouse, and the firemen were making haste to unravel the long, thick hose.

"Kai!" Tyson waved at him. He seemed to be back to his old self, too, with the same exceptions as Kai's own. The rest of the Bladebreakers were surrounding him, trying to get the story out of him, trying to see if he was alright. The ambulance workers were trying to shoo them away, saying that Tyson was in critical condition – he'd been shot twice, for heaven's sake!

Kai approached them slowly.

"Is Yuriy alright?"

The Russian looked down at his friend, whose lips now had a blue tint to them.

The chatter stopped, and the gravity of what had happened sunk in.

* * *

"Kai, I'm so sorry… I shouldn't have let him go after Voltaire," Tyson whispered as he looked up at Kai from the floor, his eyes teary with sorrow. Kai, Tyson, and Kenny were in the ambulance, seated on either side in the back. Tyson was forced to lie down on a stretcher in the middle while a doctor examined him. Kai was ordered to lie down as well, but he refused. Yuriy jostled in his arms whenever the ambulance went over a bump in the road. The siren was still going.

"I can't believe this," the doctor muttered to himself as he continued to clean Tyson's wounds. "How are you still alive, let alone not bleeding to death at this very moment?"

The silvery bangs that hung over Kai's face parted slightly, allowing Tyson to see the pure emotion that resided in it. Never before had Tyson seen such a look on his captain's face, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to remember it. Such strong, visible grief was plaguing his captain that Tyson was sure some of his very own tears were triggered by it.

"It's not your fault," Kai replied in a hoarse voice, "it's mine. I should have taken him down myself. I shouldn't have let Yuriy risk his life."

"Kai," Tyson said, "this is going to sound cheesy… but really, it's OK to cry sometimes. I know that's hard for you to do, but you need to try and be human. I swear, I won't tell a soul if you do."

Kai nodded although no tears escaped him, despite him knowing that they were there, ready to spill over.

A voice of one of the drivers in the front crackled through the speaker which connected the two cabins.

"_Preparing for hospital arrival in thirty seconds." _

"Err, guys, are you OK?" Kenny asked, leaning forward in his seat with concern.

The two seemed to have suddenly become totally exhausted and drained of energy. Their insignias had stopped glowing, and their eyes returned to normal. Kai seemed to drift off to sleep, his head falling forwards onto Yuriy's frozen chest. Tyson's eyelids fluttered shut.

The paramedic jumped as blood started to gush from Tyson's wounds. The other worker who had been attending to Kenny rushed over to help her co-worker. The third, who was sitting with the stubborn Kai, was leaning towards him, trying to shake him awake.

'What madness is this?!' Kenny thought worriedly at the sudden outbreak of chaos.

* * *

(1 - Didn't I tell you I'd fit it in somewhere, Boadiccea? ; )

Hmmm ;) I'm still allowed to write cliff-hangers, although there's only one more chapter left! Don't shoot me!

Oh man, this chapter is _so _overloaded with drama and cheese! Oh, the cheese… it's like a fondue! (Although I don't _really_ know what a fondue tastes like, I think…) x.x

I just hope you thought it was the _good_ type of cheese, like… I dunno, cheddar, or mozzarella, or parmesan, maybe… Not blue cheese. (Blegh, that stuff is **gross**.)

Yes, and my apologies for updating so late. Thank you guys for the reviews! I think this chapter's the longest one I've ever written… 20 pages! :P

**And if you're leaving here without reviewing, STOP DOING THAT.**** I need reviews. **_**They fuel my brain. **_

Oh, and Yuriy / Tala fans, don't kill me, please? :)

As I've mentioned, one more chapter to go. Hopefully I'll be able to write some nice **TYKA** for you guys! (:turns into tomato: arrgh, I don't know how I'm going to manage that… but I guess I'll try…)

And, I've thought of a way to end this story so that it's possible to have a sequel. What do ya think, hmm? ;) Review and let me know!

Phoenix-Roar


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